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

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

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QUICK TIPS:
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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 Bruce1984

I think that what I'm looking for (the separate forums, different products) isn't possible, well, not exactly what I was looking for. Hopefully I can explain everything clearly enough, pretty hard to explain without visuals.

But I think I've managed a work-around (not exactly a work-around, but a setting I had to adjust). Before, I had no forum ID entered, as there were several different forums (movies, hardware, etc). Now, I've created a sub-forum in the 'staff area' where new products will be posted once submitted, up for moderation. When moderated, they can then be placed in their respective categories and along with it the proper sub-forums.

I wouldn't call that a workaround so much as intent...

The idea is that you have "users" suggesting products and "admins" approving them for the right category. The problem with data is it's origin and while it's faster to let people just add to any given forum that ups the risk.

Rather than a single thread for both reviews and comments?

Essentially all reviews are always appended as a post and optionally as a thread too. Whether or not you allow comments is up to you. If you don't want the review post you can hack it out but it is cross linked in a few places.

With the initial, to-be-moderated, products listed in the sub-forum in the staff section, it works fine, since it only creates a 'review' thread for the product. But if I would like an accompanying thread for comments, so I can keep reviews and comments separate, that would be a different thing entirely, wouldn't it?

Correct. I can offer a hook location up after the product thread is made to let you come back in and add another thread for your specific forum.

[Bruce1984]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Essentially all reviews are always appended as a post and optionally as a thread too. Whether or not you allow comments is up to you. If you don't want the review post you can hack it out but it is cross linked in a few places.

Gotcha. Is the appending of the posts (extra reviews) using the permissions of the forums? Otherwise perhaps I could restrict users from posting comments in the initial/original product thread, only allowing the extra reviews to be added as posts to the original thread -and- separate threads, in which users could reply.

Originally Posted by Ted S

Correct. I can offer a hook location up after the product thread is made to let you come back in and add another thread for your specific forum.

Alright, and I guess that would be awesome. If that would bring some automation to the process.

So to get things clear (and in case I might have explained things not clear enough), here's what I'm eventually looking for:

Various categories for 'products':
- Movies with reviews
- Music with reviews
- TV Series with reviews
- Hardware (actual products) with reviews
- Software (programs) with reviews

When a user submits a 'product', albeit a movie, a headset or a TV series:
- Thread is created in a Staff Only forum (done)
- Administrator either approves or denies it.

Upon denial:
- Either nothing happens, thread stays in staff forum or thread is moved to a 'Trash' forum

Upon approval:
- Product is added to the proper category (happens/done)
- Thread is created in proper sub-forum (happens/done)
- Thread is closed for regular postings/comments, only open to additional review posts

When a review is added:
- Post replied to original product thread (happens by default)
- New thread created in proper sub-forum for the additional review, open for commenting

So if it wasn't quite clear what I was hoping for, I hope it is now . Anything you could help me with to achieve something like the above, would be great. I do hope it's not too much to ask though.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Bruce1984

Gotcha. Is the appending of the posts (extra reviews) using the permissions of the forums?

No. It's hard coded into the mod with overwrite rules to insure reviews still show up even if you disable responding.

Originally Posted by Bruce1984

When a user submits a 'product', albeit a movie, a headset or a TV series:
- Thread is created in a Staff Only forum (done)
- Administrator either approves or denies it.

The mod will allow the thread to be approved/ rejected/ moved as you described. As far as the closed status, you can set permissions in the forum to not allow replies but that will apply to all threads and you'd still need to create your comment thread as well. You'd likely want to create an extension for either/ both for to save yourself the manual work. Or tweak your requirements to allow both reviews & comments together.

To be clear a hook won't do this for you but rather would let you mod the mod to develop further without having to make a change each time the core code is updated.

[Bruce1984]

Alright, understood.

Unfortunately, I'm not too experienced with creating modifications myself. I'm usually perfectly fine with installing, checking all settings and fix small things, for example if reported in the mod thread. So I'll either have to change the 'requirements' as you stated, or learn how to develop the mod haha .

I think that for now I'll just leave the things be, because it does seem to be working now (as to be expected obviously).

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Oh, and here's me thinking out loud, hopefully not too far out of place, but is there 'an easy way' perhaps to alter the order in which certain posts are displayed/added to a thread?
Like, could I 'flag' the additional reviews posted in the product thread as being reviews/pinned/sticky/whatever and have them appear at the top of the thread, and have all regular posts/comments on the product to be appended? Or could that be a requested feature?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Bruce1984

Oh, and here's me thinking out loud, hopefully not too far out of place, but is there 'an easy way' perhaps to alter the order in which certain posts are displayed/added to a thread?

Like, could I 'flag' the additional reviews posted in the product thread as being reviews/pinned/sticky/whatever and have them appear at the top of the thread, and have all regular posts/comments on the product to be appended? Or could that be a requested feature?

Ordering by another attribute before date is certainly possible. If it's in demand we can look at bringing it into the mod.

[Bruce1984]

That would be awesome, now if only I could get this specific request under the attention of everyone, hoping for more support .

Either way, thanks for all your support, hopefully the feature will be added in the (near) future!

[deverill2010]

I would be interested in that request.

I noticed when you click through to reviews from productforums.php it doesn't actually take you to the specific review but instead the start of the thread.

Having the reviews pinned to the front would be handy to save users having to trawl through posts in between reviews.

[UK CHI3F]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Where do you see this?

It is in the admin panel when i click on the product reviews and try to use:
custom rating fields
or anything in the product review items section

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

I would be interested in that request.

I noticed when you click through to reviews from productforums.php it doesn't actually take you to the specific review but instead the start of the thread.

Having the reviews pinned to the front would be handy to save users having to trawl through posts in between reviews.

It should take you to the post...?

Are you using the review thread option or not?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by UK CHI3F

It is in the admin panel when i click on the product reviews and try to use:
custom rating fields
or anything in the product review items section

The script checks for the right to make posts [since reviews are posts].

Double check your admin account has this specific right and if not I'm sure we can add an explicit user group for the option in the future.