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.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by SemperFideles

Good point. I guess I didn't read the documentation carefully enough. There are private forums where users would like to note that they found a post helpful but that doesn't imply that the data concerning what the post was about should have permissions to be viewed outside the members-only area. I guess I had grown accustomed to other products that maintain forum permissions when displaying data.

Easy enough to add in. Just increases the overhead of that page a bit... such as the tradeoff.

[Neofate]

Awesome! I've been looking for this mod for 4.x.x for a week now! Finally had to key in the right search keyword.. to find it. Maybe I'll be looking to code or find a better forum search function for VB.. lol. I'm sure it's out there.

But Ted, you rock, and thanks for this. Really, makes a big difference.

I MOTM, and Marked installed of course (and it isn't yet).

You should do more mods, you have great talent and ideas.

Take care,

[Neofate]

Also -- I would be willing to 'donate' immediately for this overhead code which you could offer here for all to add manually if that would be quicker, or add to the code for download. Just let me know sir.

*I have noticed with my 4.1.3 -- Which I think has no problems with this mod.

That the thumbs up and down -- the {vb:raw helpful_answers} .. by default comes BEFORE the subject line.. and puts an awkward space between it and subject line.

Is there anyway I can get it to be 'inline' on the same line as the subject, so the subject looks normal? It makes the alignment of the listings look odd.. Is this normal behavior to push the subject line/header down?

Is there any logical reason why it can't be on the same line? There is more than enough space that is never occupied on the right hand side.

I also used the guide to place it below the signature, but while it works.. it have a space between it and the bottom of the post box.. (between it and the bar with the options to edit, quote, reply, multiquote and so on) -- AND it randomly will leave 2 to 4 single spaces between it and this option bar.

I use postbit_legacy by default.

Any answers , or help?

Maybe I need to modify the php, or some other code a bit to allow it to be inline with something?

I don't really mind where I have to put it, as long as it keeps the post box layout looking as it 'used' to.. or as intended.

I have it disabled until I can figure out an answer to this. Anyone is welcome to share ideas. I would appreciate it.

I will, as I said, donate for the option people are requesting and even to have this working properly.

Thank you !

[ALBCODERS]

This is a beautifull mod I like it,but not working on vb 4.0.3

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Neofate

Also -- I would be willing to 'donate' immediately for this overhead code which you could offer here for all to add manually if that would be quicker, or add to the code for download. Just let me know sir.

Thanks for the offer however donations do not drive my development; comments on the thread and the clear illustration that people are working to extend the offering of the mod are what I look for and updates [other than bug fixes] are released in batches so that people don't have to upgrade frequently. The next planned update will likely be an extensive update this summer as I mentioned a few posts back.

That the thumbs up and down -- the {vb:raw helpful_answers} .. by default comes BEFORE the subject line.. and puts an awkward space between it and subject line.

Yes it does. It's placed in a DIV that shows up before the subjectline.

Is there anyway I can get it to be 'inline' on the same line as the subject, so the subject looks normal? It makes the alignment of the listings look odd.. Is this normal behavior to push the subject line/header down?

It's a separate div but with css you can place it however you like... float it, pad it, color it, etc.

Is there any logical reason why it can't be on the same line? There is more than enough space that is never occupied on the right hand side.

There's just about nothing that you can't do logically, however logic and easy [to install / avoid conflicts from] are different. The subject is an existing core part of the site and while it may be shorter most of the time, that's really about browser types, subject lengths, prefixes and resolution. I try to keep mods more universal... improving upon the base to fit your style better is a great idea. Very logical, very possible, but not ideal for a universal default.

I also used the guide to place it below the signature, but while it works.. it have a space between it and the bottom of the post box.. (between it and the bar with the options to edit, quote, reply, multiquote and so on) -- AND it randomly will leave 2 to 4 single spaces between it and this option bar.

It's not random, it's a function of stacking spacing in the post, the height of the area, other elements that all combine to appear as more or less padding.

Maybe I need to modify the php, or some other code a bit to allow it to be inline with something?

CSS, not PHP but yes, it's something you can and should customize to meet your exact needs.

If you aren't familiar with CSS I can help with this to a degree but vBulletin makes customizing styles painful. In short if you want two elements on the same line the easiest way is to "float" both of them, one to the left and one to the right. This is done with the attribute float:left; float:right. Let me know if that sounds greek or gets you started.

I will, as I said, donate for the option people are requesting and even to have this working properly.

Again, please be clear on the difference between working properly and working how you want. I don't disagree with your request but your comment implies that there is a bug which other users will read and take as it. The truth is that you would like functionality and while perfectly reasonable to ask, it's very different than "not working properly".

[scubasteve3]

Hi Ted,
1. How would you make it so that users only rank the very first post (The initial thread)?

2. How do you get this to work on front page articles?

Thanks!!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by scubasteve3

Hi Ted,
1. How would you make it so that users only rank the very first post (The initial thread)?

There's a feature to not show this on the first post. Enable that.

Then pop open product-helpful_answers vb404.xml and go to line 907, change this from == to !=

Save. Upload the XML file. Done.

Originally Posted by scubasteve3

2. How do you get this to work on front page articles?

As in posts on the frontpage or articles stored sepertely from posts?

[baghdad4ever]

hi

can you add button for every post by which the best answer chosen only by the thread starter?

and after he choose the best the thread automatically closed

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by baghdad4ever

hi

can you add button for every post by which the best answer chosen only by the thread starter?

and after he choose the best the thread automatically closed

This is really a seperate mod which could certainly work with this but as you're no longer having user's vote per post there isn't much value in making it all one system. Better for someone to build a seperate "Best Answer" system and then share the display placement with Helpful Answers.

[TheShanka]

I'm unsure why this mod isn't currently working for my site; vBulletin 4.1.4 - I've installed it, all the files are up, made settings changed as I thought appropriate, but no joy. Perhaps it's the bit in the first post about it needing to be enabled in certain forums? How do I go about this as it only seems to mention threads in the Options for it.

Thanks in advance; looking forward to the feature working with my site - the members should get a real kick out of it.