Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Allow users to rate individual posts

Helpful Answers has been used to record over 6 MILLION times on more than 2,000 forums. If you're not using HA your users are looking for it!

Every day your users contribute hundreds if not thousands of posts making it hard for new members and guests to separate out the best answers from those that are less helpful. The Helpful Answers System offers your members a quick way to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the value of each post.

Designed to be flexible, HA has over 30 configurable settings:

• Use image or text ratings AJAX or traditional links.
• Offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• Turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• Decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• Audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• Ban specific members from using the system.
• Customize the message shown after a post is rated.
• Show a page with the top helpful posts.
• Show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Hide posts that rate "too low"
• Template driven so you can customize it all for your forum.

For advanced users template conditionals and variables let you further extend the functionality to color highlight good or bad posts, include ratings in user?s profiles and much more.

Modification Installation [Must Read]:

Step 1: Upload the addon files found in the upload/ folder to your forum directory
Step 2: Install the plugin through your vB Administration area
Step 3: Configure settings & enable the mod in individual forums

You must configure settings & enable forums before voting will show up.
Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):

By default this addon will pass basic rating data (positive or negative) to a 3rd party site for statistical purposes. Only the most basic data is captured (the vote and your site name) and no user information or specific forum details are logged, not even an IP address. You can disable this through the admin.

Mod Philosophy -- Drive Your Own Success:

All of my mods are inspired by my work in digital marketing and are designed to drive registrations, interaction or other engagement activities the core platform does not address.

Each is designed to fit a general need by providing a starting point but it's on you to decide how to make things work to their best possible outcome. Feel free to suggest what you'd like to see next but don't wait to have what everyone else has; figure out what your forum needs and customize away.

[CvP]

Originally Posted by Ted S

There is basic moderation via the admin, more extensive admin options are still in development.

Glad to know there are still more features to come :up:

Originally Posted by Ted S

Are you using the hide negative rated posts option?

yes, he was using it. when turned off, it was fixed.

Originally Posted by Ted S

It sounds like your css template modifications have altered the default collapse behavoir or the behavoir in the postbit pages.

can you please elaborate? I have a vB's stock skin (only admin available) and this problem occurs in that too.
To me, it seems like while hiding the post, it is placing the "collapse" button instead of "expand" button.
setting display: none; and display: block; thru firebug works fine. so the problem is placing the wrong button in there.

Originally Posted by Ted S

The hide bit adds a new layer to hide the post. If you have a background you should not use this option.

how about doing it this way:
to hide a post,

li#post_203404 div.postdetails, li#post_203404 div.postfoot {
 display: none;
}

then in li#post_203404 div.posthead
insert something like this in span.nodecontrols [i just copy pasted the collapse code that i get; it should be the expand code):

<a class="collapse" id="collapse_ppost_203404" href="#top"><img src="images/buttons/collapse_40b.png" alt="" title="Collapse this Post"></a>

when clicked, i can just set display: block; to those two div.
when clicked again, set display: none;

[CvP]

template name: helpful_answers_hidelowstart

contents:

		
			<div class="block collapse">
				<h2 class="blockhead" style="background-color:#fff;border:none;">

				<a class="collapse" id="collapse_ppost_{vb:raw post.postid}" href="#top"><img src="{vb:stylevar imgdir_button}/collapse{vb:raw vbcollapse.collapseimg_ppost_{vb:raw post.postid}_img}_40b.png" alt="" title="Collapse this Post" /></a>		
				<span class="blocktitle" style="color:#000">{vb:rawphrase helpfulanswer_hidden,{vb:raw post.username}}</span>
				
				</h2>
			</div><br />
			
			<div id="ppost_{vb:raw post.postid}" style="display: none;">

I'm not that much expert in vB codings, but somehow, this seems wrong to me.


also, Ted, what does this option do? "Enable Single Post Voting"

[bfdzio]

Has the problem with all posts collapsing when you have a negative rating?

I want to have bad posts get collapsed but not when only ONE person votes it negatively. I want bad posts to collapse when they get at least 5 negative votes. Unfortunately, once any post is hidden they are all hidden.

Was mentioned and replied to here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...86&post2062886

[CvP]

hey Ted. I have modified it a bit. I believe this UI is much better (and simple) than lots of texts.
i have moved it to post footer; after multi quote button.



anyways, I have two problems.

It seems post.goodrank is not initialized to 0 (but post.badrank is 0) when a post is not voted (up or down) even once.
so i can never get a /\ 0 | 0 \/ it is always /\ | 0 \/




2nd problem: I'm not sure how I can update the counters and images using ajax.
if you can give me some hint, I'm sure i can manage it.
I have modified the _roll template properly. all it needs to do is update codes according to the template.

[pete_brady]

Originally Posted by CvP

hey Ted. I have modified it a bit. I believe this UI is much better (and simple) than lots of texts.

sure is - can you share how you achieved this?

[10 Gauge]

Originally Posted by pete_brady

sure is - can you share how you achieved this?

+1

I want this!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by bfdzio

Has the problem with all posts collapsing when you have a negative rating?

I want to have bad posts get collapsed but not when only ONE person votes it negatively. I want bad posts to collapse when they get at least 5 negative votes. Unfortunately, once any post is hidden they are all hidden.

Was mentioned and replied to here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...86&post2062886

The feature lets you pick the number of votes, just be sure you set this in your admin options.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by CvP

It seems post.goodrank is not initialized to 0 (but post.badrank is 0) when a post is not voted (up or down) even once.

So you mean it's blank? Yes. It's not set unless there's a value... simple solution is to edit the plugin to make this variable an INT so if it's empty it goes to 0. This is changed for the next release but you can do it yourself... around like 946

$post['goodrank'] = int($post['goodrank']);

2nd problem: I'm not sure how I can update the counters and images using ajax.
if you can give me some hint, I'm sure i can manage it.
I have modified the _roll template properly. all it needs to do is update codes according to the template.

You need to use the javascript voting code:

<a href="./helpfulanswers.php?do=rate&postid={vb:raw post.postid}&rank=1" <vb:if condition="$vboptions[disable_ajax] != 2"> onclick="return helpfulanswers_rate({vb:raw post.postid}, 1);" </vb:if> rel="nofollow" onmouseover="document.post_{vb:raw post.postid}_up.src='images/buttons/ha_arrowup.gif';" onmouseout="document.post_{vb:raw post.postid}_up.src='images/buttons/ha_arrowup_gray.gif';"><img name="post_{vb:raw post.postid}_up" src="images/buttons/ha_arrowup_gray.gif" width="11" height="20" border="0" alt="{vb:rawphrase helpfulanswer_yes}" /></a>

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by CvP

how about doing it this way:
to hide a post,

li#post_203404 div.postdetails, li#post_203404 div.postfoot {
 display: none;
}

then in li#post_203404 div.posthead
insert something like this in span.nodecontrols [i just copy pasted the collapse code that i get; it should be the expand code):

<a class="collapse" id="collapse_ppost_203404" href="#top"><img src="images/buttons/collapse_40b.png" alt="" title="Collapse this Post"></a>

when clicked, i can just set display: block; to those two div.
when clicked again, set display: none;

The post ids are generated dynamically per thread so it's a burden to set this per li.

The css styles for your post will generally still show, i'm looking to see what's getting overriden... vb css is pretty evil.

[CvP]

Originally Posted by Ted S

So you mean it's blank? Yes. It's not set unless there's a value... simple solution is to edit the plugin to make this variable an INT so if it's empty it goes to 0. This is changed for the next release but you can do it yourself... around like 946

I'm sorry but I'm not sure where to place it. 946 number line of which file? the main XML? it didn't work

Originally Posted by pete_brady

sure is - can you share how you achieved this?

Originally Posted by 10 Gauge

+1
I want this!

sure. but let me get it working properly first
If Ted feels like, he can even include it in the core product.

Originally Posted by Ted S

You need to use the javascript voting code:

<a href="./helpfulanswers.php?do=rate&postid={vb:raw post.postid}&rank=1" <vb:if condition="$vboptions[disable_ajax] != 2"> onclick="return helpfulanswers_rate({vb:raw post.postid}, 1);" </vb:if> rel="nofollow" onmouseover="document.post_{vb:raw post.postid}_up.src='images/buttons/ha_arrowup.gif';" onmouseout="document.post_{vb:raw post.postid}_up.src='images/buttons/ha_arrowup_gray.gif';"><img name="post_{vb:raw post.postid}_up" src="images/buttons/ha_arrowup_gray.gif" width="11" height="20" border="0" alt="{vb:rawphrase helpfulanswer_yes}" /></a>

[s]The rating, ajax etc...everything is working.
After rating, I get the msg "...thanks for rating...".
But I want to update the counter and arrow images. I'm not sure from where the ajax response text is coming from.[/s]
I managed to pull it off

Originally Posted by Ted S

The post ids are generated dynamically per thread so it's a burden to set this per li.

The css styles for your post will generally still show, i'm looking to see what's getting overriden... vb css is pretty evil.

then you can try using the already built in post hiding method. the one vB uses for deleted posts. it has a view post button. so you can just reuse that template with a little modification.
then add a hide post button if necessary.