Major Additions - Product Review Forums ? Research, Review & Compare Items

Version 1.4.0 has been released to remove the giftery / list it integration of the addon now that service has been discontinued. No upgrade is needed though there have been a few other bug changes since 1.3.5.

Finding Feedback Can be Like a Needle in a Haystack

The more your forum grows, the more of a challenge it becomes to sort through the history and get the full story.

Product Review Forums Brings Structure to the Chaos

As a full-featured product management addon, PRF sits on top of your forum allowing you to create defined products which, unlike individual posts, stay relevant over time. Each comment, review and even product updates filter back into this one spot allowing for a quick and comprehensive overview while the individual discussions rage on as always.

Here's just a few of the many features you'll find in PRF:

• Bring structure to products with established pages & reviews
• Reduce the number of repetitive posts from members looking up the same info
• Increase your traffic with content-rich, seo friendly, product listings
• Drive revenue by adding your own affiliate links to product listings
• Increase the activity stream's value with review integration
  
• Engage visitors with integrated wishlists from Giftery.me

===========================

Installation is not upload & go... individualized settings are required. Read the install file.

===========================
QUICK TIPS:
===========================

Enabling Product Forums: To show product details and ratings, each product-forum must be enabled in the forum manager.

Adding Products: You may upload products one at a time through the admin [includes an image uploader using GD] or you can bulk import through XML. You can also enable users to add moderated products through a global and usergroup option.

Product Review Index: To access your forum's product overview go to www.yoursite.com/productforums.php - You may want to add a link to this to your navbar or as a tab.

Customization: This addon is made to be customized. To change the color schema see clientscript/vbulletin_css or dive right on in to the templates and phrases.

Powered by Giftery.me: This mod is maintained includes two integrations you should know about. Both can be controlled through the mod options.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

And I had a question. Is there a way for the 'normal' threads within the product forum to show normally. I.e don't show the Rated: 0.0 / 5 & reviews column as this looks confusing and messy. They are normal threads not products so shouldn't be interefered with.

Mixing normal threads with review threads is just fine. Changing the forumdisplay however changes it for the entire forum... You can tweak the prodforums_threadbit template to adjust however you like.

The code you're looking at is:

<vb:if condition="!$show['notificationtype']">                    
        <ul class="threadstats td alt" title="<vb:if condition="$thread['dot_count'] > 0">{vb:rawphrase have_x_posts_in_thread_last_y, {vb:raw thread.dot_count}, {vb:raw thread.dot_lastpost}}</vb:if>">
        <li>{vb:rawphrase prodforums_rating,{vb:raw thread.pf_rating}}</li>
        <li>{vb:rawphrase prodforums_reviews,{vb:raw thread.pf_reviews}}</li>
        <li class="hidden">{vb:rawphrase rating}{vb:raw thread.rating} / 5</li>
        </ul>
</vb:if>

[GCC LLC]

Ok, next up.. lol. Sorry to make it seem like all I'm doing is pointing out problems - because overall this is an excellent product. We have an issue where a user submitted their own new product which we approved. That seemed to work fine. However, when the user (or anyone for that matter) go to leave a review of the product, we (including myself as an admin) get this error:

We had an issue posting your review, please try again or contact support and use code 164251-E.

That error, according to your code seems to relate to something having to do with not being able to add new posts to the thread (build_new_post() function not adding the post?). When I turn on debugging, the only additional info I get in the error is Array (not the contents of the array).

The thread appears to be open and able to be posted in, according to mysql:

mysql> select open from thread where threadid = xxxxxx;
+------+
| open |
+------+
| 1 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select visible from thread where threadid = xxxxxx;
+---------+
| visible |
+---------+
| 1 |
+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Ok, next up.. lol. Sorry to make it seem like all I'm doing is pointing out problems - because overall this is an excellent product. We have an issue where a user submitted their own new product which we approved. That seemed to work fine. However, when the user (or anyone for that matter) go to leave a review of the product, we (including myself as an admin) get this error:

We had an issue posting your review, please try again or contact support and use code 164251-E.

Not to worry. It's actually good to see people going to this detail to use the features. Unfortunately with endless combinations errors do come up so I appreciate your tolerance to working through them.

That message means vB was not able to build a reply. We can diagnose this further if open up productforums.php and go to around like 544

Replace eval(standard_error(fetch_error('prodforums_review _critdebug','164251-E',$errors))); with:

echo "debug code:<br>";
print_r($errors);
die;

Run a review on a user made product and you should see more detail but in short what it's saying is that it couldn't post the reply so likely a permission issue.

[GCC LLC]

Thanks, it was due to the length of the post title. The product itself had a long name, then when you added on the "x out of 5 rating for" plus the product name, it exceeded vB's length.

As a hack, I just edited the construction on newpost['title'] to make it much shorter.

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Please try the attached version of upload/productforums.php which addresses the dup content issue [note: I couldn't duplicate it so this may take another shot or two].

For moderation I'm honestly stumped and unable to recreate it thus I'll have to unfortunately as for a little help on your part...

Next time a review gets stuck in the queue before you release it please check it's status in your SQL database:

SELECT visible FROM post WHERE postid = XXXX;

We'll keep going from there until it's all fixed.

The updated php seems to have fixed the duplicate content issue. The posts still go into moderation though. At least it's much easier to just go in and approve them from admincp now though. I know you're working hard on this so I just wanted to take the time to say thanks for your time and effort!

[GCC LLC]

Ok, moderation issue fixed. Just before your build_new_post() function is called, I added the following two lines:

$forumperms = fetch_permissions($foruminfo['forumid']);
$foruminfo['moderatenewthread'] = 0;

[ashimashi]

Originally Posted by Ted S

If you don't know where your database tables are you probably shouldn't try and do this, until you learn some mySQL & php that is. :up:

Messing around with your system at this level risks your entire forum if you do the wrong thing. Not the kind of stuff we like to document as the easier it appears, the more likely people are to jump in without paying attention to the warning system.

Okay thanks still!

Well I don't think there would be a mistake if there was a step by step guide on what to do. Besides I always back up files before doing something like this.

thanks anyways

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Thanks, it was due to the length of the post title. The product itself had a long name, then when you added on the "x out of 5 rating for" plus the product name, it exceeded vB's length.

As a hack, I just edited the construction on newpost['title'] to make it much shorter.

Awesome...

Now to find out how long is too long...

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by ashimashi

Okay thanks still!

Well I don't think there would be a mistake if there was a step by step guide on what to do. Besides I always back up files before doing something like this.

thanks anyways

People should back that up every time they install a mod, but they don't. People should read the install guide for a mod, but they don't. And this isn't about your files, it's your entire forum's data is.

While I totally want to see people grow their sites and make that easy [hence all the free mods], I'm certain that this passes the "risk to reward" threshold. Sorry!

If you want to take your forum beyond a certain point you really have to either learn some code or hire someone who knows it. There's great resources for both here @ vB.org too

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Ok, moderation issue fixed. Just before your build_new_post() function is called, I added the following two lines:

$forumperms = fetch_permissions($foruminfo['forumid']);
$foruminfo['moderatenewthread'] = 0;

Dude, rock on. For some reason those were hardset the other way.... and yet not breaking things for most forums?

Did this fix the posts and threads?