Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Post Rating System (plus many sub-features)

Note: While this modification is updated for compatibility, I am only developing features for the 4.x version. I understand many sites continue to use 3.8 for a variety of reasons but dual developing takes time away from adding anything new. I encourage you to develop out your own change and share them back as no modification is ideal for every forum out of the box.

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 (AJAX) to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the benefits of each post.

Designed for maximum flexibility:


This addon is built to be flexible and offers several customization options including:

• The ability to show a user's vote stats in posts
• The ability to use image or text ratings.
• The ability to offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• The ability to turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• The ability to decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• The ability to audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• The ability to ban specific members from using the system.
• The ability to customize the AJAX message shown after a post is rated.
• The ability to edit all text and messages through phrases.
• The ability to show a page with the top helpful posts.
• The ability to show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Integration with the reputation system for ratings.
• Template driven display that can easily be customized to 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.

Load & Scale:
This addon is designed to work with small to large sites and is currently being used by sites with more than 2 million posts. If you have questions about integrating with your big board please contact me.

Modification Installation:
This addon requires uploading multiple files, installing a vBulletin product and enabling the feature in any forums you wish. No template modifications are required. Please see the included install file for detailed instructions.

If you are not seeing the rating bar double check that you have enabled the feature in the forum you are in and insure the Manual Template override option is not enabled.

Rating Review & Deletion:
To identify and remove abuse a reporting system is included with this addon and can be found in your vBulletin ACP under the Helpful Answers tab. Through this panel you will be able to view a user's overall rating history and individual ratings and can remove either if necessary. Users can also be explicitly banned from the system.

Reputation System Integration:
Helpful Answers can be extended to directly tie into your reputation system giving users positive or negative points based on the ratings of their posts. There are numerous options on how to handle ratings that can be found in a separate Helpful Answers Reputation part of your vBulletin Settings page.

External Integration:
vB Plaza Modification - http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359
vB Experience - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199556

Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):
vBulletin forums reach millions of consumers around the world yet little is known about their habits and opinions. This addon was released to the public out of requests but also to further the research of forum user's behaviors and actions through collecting the most basic data on thousands of sites.

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.

While you may disable this feature through the administrative options I ask that you consider leaving it in place to help this research effort and insure the continued support of the addon.

The tracking feature uses the php library cURL on a 5 second timeout. If cURL is not installed this option is automatically disabled.

Updates:
- 5/13/2011 - Release of 2.0.6 minor bug fix
- 08/31/2009 - Release of 2.0.0
- 08/07/2009 - Release of 1.9.5 stable

Other Versions:
This addon will work with 3.7 but to avoid issues with different code versions please see the 3.7 version thread here.

Before you download this modification please remember this is a free tool provided as a courtesy to you and support responses are subject to the availability of the author and other members. If you are looking for a professionally supported system this is not the solution for you.

[Capper5016]

maybe put that, and some examples on the examples page?

[Ted S]

Unfortunately I don't have the time to document every possible example iteration. This addon is intended to look good out of the box but also provides a great number of variables for people who want to dig in and change things around. Templates are basically basic HTML and those who are familiar with it should have no problems making changes; if you're not it's difficult for me to walk you through all the possibilities even with a dozen examples.

All of the main variables are of listed in the second post with the examples.

Like most variables you can use this one in a conditional to add any code you like be it a bold line saying "Best Rated", a background color, etc...

[Capper5016]

I'd really like to have the post with the highest rating highlighted with a different color.

If anyone can help me set that up, I'd really appreciate it.

On the members profile page, I'd also like to have the "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down" with the members overall stats. Right now it says (member name) Posts have been rated good (_) out of (_) times.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Capper5016

I'd really like to have the post with the highest rating highlighted with a different color.

The variable for the top post is $threadinfo[toppost] and is only active when enabled. You can use that in a conditional to change the box color.

If you need help learning html I'd suggest the main programming forum here at vBulletin.org as you won't find many people checking hack threads to help others.

On the members profile page, I'd also like to have the "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down" with the members overall stats. Right now it says (member name) Posts have been rated good (_) out of (_) times.

Just edit the template helpful_statsbit and add the thumb images where you want them. Remove the phrases or any other text if you don't want it.

[Capper5016]

Theres no reason to be snippy. I'm sure I'm not alone in needing guidance with these variables, and how to use them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who asks where you'd put $threadinfo[toppost].

I've been working with VBulletin for a couple of years, but my job is not web design or coding. Thats why we have these threads, and why people ask questions......and I see a lot worse than the couple I've tossed out there.

As to the overall stats, I dont see variables for that. I have toyed with the different variables, and they all appear to pertain to single posts, not all the users posts.

[Ted S]

I'm sorry if you felt my response was snippy, I was simply trying to direct you to a place where you're more likely to get support for your HTML question. Unfortunately people only tend to check hack threads when they have a question so there's limited opportunity to get support from others in a hack thread versus the larger vBulletin community forums.

As for your question, I think I misunderstood your last post. It sounds like you're looking to add stats about the user's overall rating history to each post... If that's the case there is no such feature in this addon as adding these variables would require an additional query for every post which is not good for server resources.

There are however global rating stats in a user's profile found with the variables $helpfulposts[goodranks] $helpfulposts[badranks] $helpfulposts[totalranks]

[Capper5016]

no no, you had it right.....ideally it would show the members overall stats (total good posts and total bad posts) on their member page, instead of "5 posts out of 5 rated good".

I understand your perspective(and I understand answering silly questions over and over is frustrating), and my feeling is that I can do anything with decent instruction.....but what I see more often than not is a real lack of patience from the people who have the answers. Most of the time the answer is Google it, read the instructions, or use the search feature (all of which I do)........but there are times when that doesnt explain something well....or something that might take 5-10 minutes for you or someone else to explain here, would take 3 hours of research on my part. Then you have the people who want to charge you for the answer.....and to be honest, this is a hobby, not a paying site, and money is tight.

[Capper5016]

The variable for the top post is $threadinfo[toppost] and is only active when enabled. You can use that in a conditional to change the box color.

I know a bit of HTML, but this is a bit beyond introductory HTML.

[Ted S]

Generally I'm more willing to help people who take steps themselves (like when you posted some variables and issues) than those who just ask without looking first. But regardless you won't see me say Google it... I can't always provide the help people need but I certainly don't like to drop them off and force them to learn an entire language either.

In any case, the profile has the two variables I mentioned previously controlled from the template I also mentioned before. Right now there's a lot of phrases controlling the layout of that box -- rip all of that out and just use some basic html. The variables carry the votes, the images you can call up directly.

As for the top post it's not basic HTML but still nothing crazy.

For example:

<if condition="$threadinfo[toppost] == $post[postid]">This is the top rated post!</code>

Using the same logic you could for example add to the table cell holding the post contents to change its color.

If you chose to tinker around and get stuck let me know and we'll find a solution.

[Capper5016]

I completely understand, and agree.... on helping yourself. I've read each and every post in this thread and can understand your reluctance in even answering most questions.

My feeling on the questions I'm asking are that they are ones that might extend the flexibility of this mod for most users. Instead of just installing and running the basics, they see that there are several different, and very useful methods of implementing it. It takes it from a simple "Helpful answers" mod to something much more.

Code:
<if condition="$threadinfo[toppost] == $post[postid]">This is the top rated post!</code>
Using the same logic you could for example add to the table cell holding the post contents to change its color.

Changing the color is exactly what I was looking at....but wasnt sure what specific template to edit. I think a lot of the issue I'm running into is what should be edited as a template, and what I should be editing in phrases.

I think it would really help people out to add stuff like the code above to the second post as well.