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]

Yuck. I'll dig in shortly... sorry!

[Haywire0311]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Yuck. I'll dig in shortly... sorry!

I figured out the 'j' after 'd' issue. It's due to the normalize special character function starting on line 1861.

PHP Code:

function normalize_str($str)
{
$invalid = array('?'=>'S', '?'=>'s', '?'=>'Dj', 'd'=>'dj', '?'=>'Z', '?'=>'z',
'C'=>'C', 'c'=>'c', 'C'=>'C', 'c'=>'c', '?'=>'A', '?'=>'A', '?'=>'A', '√'=>'A',
'?'=>'A', '≈'=>'A', '∆'=>'A', '?'=>'C', '?'=>'E', '?'=>'E', '+'=>'E', '?'=>'E',
'?'=>'I', '?'=>'I', '?'=>'I', '?'=>'I', '?'=>'N', '?'=>'O', '?'=>'O', '?'=>'O',
'?'=>'O', '?'=>'O', '?'=>'O', '?'=>'U', '⁄'=>'U', '?'=>'U', '?'=>'U', '?'=>'Y',
'fi'=>'B', 'fl'=>'Ss', '?'=>'a', '?'=>'a', '?'=>'a', '?'=>'a', '?'=>'a', '?'=>'a',
'?'=>'a', '?'=>'c', '?'=>'e', '?'=>'e', '?'=>'e',  '?'=>'e', '?'=>'i', '?'=>'i',
'?'=>'i', '?'=>'i', ''=>'o', '?'=>'n', '?'=>'o', '?'=>'o', '?'=>'o', 'ı'=>'o',
'?'=>'o', '?'=>'o', '˘'=>'u', '˙'=>'u', '˚'=>'u', '˝'=>'y',  '˝'=>'y', '˛'=>'b',
'ˇ'=>'y', 'R'=>'R', 'r'=>'r', "`" => "'", "?" => "'", "?" => ",", "`" => "'",
"?" => "'", "?" => """, "?" => """, "?" => "'", "â??" => "'", "{" => "",
"~" => "", "?" => "-", "?" => "'");
$str = str_replace(array_keys($invalid), array_values($invalid), $str);
return $str;
} 


You can see that the first line within the array calls for replacing d with dj. I fixed it by just getting rid of it.

Still doesn't work well with vBActivity but no a big deal. I'll just shut off vBActivity when I do the mass upload.

Thanks for trying to help me through it. Now, only if you could do that hard part for me and build out that Wants/Gots function

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Haywire0311

I figured out the 'j' after 'd' issue. It's due to the normalize special character function starting on line 1861.

PHP Code:

function normalize_str($str)
{
$invalid = array('?'=>'S', '?'=>'s', '–'=>'Dj', 'd'=>'dj', '?'=>'Z', '?'=>'z',
'C'=>'C', 'c'=>'c', 'C'=>'C', 'c'=>'c', '?'=>'A', '?'=>'A', '?'=>'A', '√'=>'A',
'ƒ'=>'A', '≈'=>'A', '∆'=>'A', '?'=>'C', '?'=>'E', '…'=>'E', '+'=>'E', '?'=>'E',
'?'=>'I', '?'=>'I', 'Œ'=>'I', 'œ'=>'I', '—'=>'N', '“'=>'O', '”'=>'O', '‘'=>'O',
'’'=>'O', '?'=>'O', '?'=>'O', 'Ÿ'=>'U', '⁄'=>'U', '€'=>'U', '‹'=>'U', '›'=>'Y',
'fi'=>'B', 'fl'=>'Ss', '‡'=>'a', '?'=>'a', '‚'=>'a', '„'=>'a', '‰'=>'a', '?'=>'a',
'?'=>'a', '?'=>'c', '?'=>'e', '?'=>'e', '?'=>'e',  '?'=>'e', '?'=>'i', '?'=>'i',
'?'=>'i', '?'=>'i', ''=>'o', '?'=>'n', '?'=>'o', '?'=>'o', '?'=>'o', 'ı'=>'o',
'ˆ'=>'o', '?'=>'o', '˘'=>'u', '˙'=>'u', '˚'=>'u', '˝'=>'y',  '˝'=>'y', '˛'=>'b',
'ˇ'=>'y', 'R'=>'R', 'r'=>'r', "`" => "'", "?" => "'", "?" => ",", "`" => "'",
"?" => "'", "?" => """, "?" => """, "?" => "'", "â??" => "'", "{" => "",
"~" => "", "?" => "-", "?" => "'");
$str = str_replace(array_keys($invalid), array_values($invalid), $str);
return $str;
} 


You can see that the first line within the array calls for replacing d with dj. I fixed it by just getting rid of it.

Still doesn't work well with vBActivity but no a big deal. I'll just shut off vBActivity when I do the mass upload.

Thanks for trying to help me through it. Now, only if you could do that hard part for me and build out that Wants/Gots function

Nice work!! Guess we know how often this gets used... lol.

Looking into vBa (any bug is a bad bug) and that other thing this weekend.

[Ted S]

Do you have any mods / addons that impact the activity system?

The line with the error is calling up the hook "threadfpdata_postsave" and I'd like to fix that less is impact the frontend features (which use the same build_post routine).

[Haywire0311]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Do you have any mods / addons that impact the activity system?

The line with the error is calling up the hook "threadfpdata_postsave" and I'd like to fix that less is impact the frontend features (which use the same build_post routine).

The only one I can think of that has any effect on the activity system is the DragonByte vBActivty mod.

Also, I think I found another small bug that probably needs some kind of SQL script run to fix it. When importing about 1700 products, I realized I imported them all into the wrong category. So, I fixed the issue in the XML and then re-uploaded to overwrite the data with the correct categoryid. It overwrote the data and corrected the categoryid and category name. However, the category count in the style dropdown in both admincp and frontend show the incorrect count number. Not sure the correct SQL syntax to use to fix the category count number.

Edit: If you want access to admin on my site, let me know and I can send you a PM with the details.

Edit #2: Just fixed the incorrect count number. Went into one of the revised items in the category just to ensure everything was correct after re-upload. All data was fine. I re-saved the item record and the count fixed itself. So the XML import overwrite won't actually fix the count until you edit a record and save again.

[Ted S]

Suspect that addon is doing it (not a negative to the addon, it's just likely colliding between things). I'll take a look.

As for counts, that's an easy fix I'll add in along with the character mapping. Just has to recalc at the end of the import process.

Anything else strike you as off while I'm working on these tweaks?

[Haywire0311]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Suspect that addon is doing it (not a negative to the addon, it's just likely colliding between things). I'll take a look.

As for counts, that's an easy fix I'll add in along with the character mapping. Just has to recalc at the end of the import process.

Anything else strike you as off while I'm working on these tweaks?

Just that there is no ability to add products to a wants/gots list Just kidding!

I really haven't found many other issues, just those bugs listed above at this point. The special character bug doesn't speak to the function not being used much. My site focuses around beer and there's tons of beers from all over the world that have funky names and characters. I think that's the only reason why I caught it and no one else did.

Sorry for pestering you with all these small tweaks. I'd do it myself but I'm really only good at reading and small tweaks to code. I'm not capable of building my own yet. Btw, great job on this mod! Love it compared to the other review mods out there. Quite a few functions that others are missing.

[Morrus]

So I revisited this to see if I could get it working the way I wanted it to. The post formatting issues I was having above I've decided to accept, and simply tell my users it's for a short unformatted comment rather than a full review.

The last thing I need to do is to add an extra field for external reviews, so users cna use it in a Metacritic kinda way. So here's what I did:

- I changed the "Your location" text to "Original Review Location", and added some verbiage to tell the user to enter the URL of the full review in that box, and a short summary in the main message area.

- All good so far. But I can't figure out which template I change to so that I can turn that into a link rather than plain text when the actual review is displayed. Ideally, what I plan to do is post a little icon, and link that to the entered URL. I figure that's an easy template edit if I can figure out which template I need to edit.

[Morrus]

Also, any idea why this code isn't working? I thought it was the same code I was using before, but reviews stick at the rating of the first review, and don't alter when new reviews are added.

// if we're approved, update the product count & average review, and user's review count
if(!$vbulletin->options['prodforums_appreviews'])
{
$ratings = $db->query_first_slave("SELECT rating FROM "
. TABLE_PREFIX
. "pf_review WHERE productid = "
. $db->escape_string($vbulletin->GPC['productid']) );

$new_rating = (array_sum($ratings)/((count($ratings)*5))*100);

$db->query_write("UPDATE "
. TABLE_PREFIX
. "pf_product SET rating = "
. $new_rating
.", reviews = reviews + 1 WHERE productid = '"
. $db->escape_string($vbulletin->GPC['productid']) ."'");

}

[Morrus]

I got that code working (redid it - took the original averaging code and just applied a multiplier).

I haven't managed to figure out the location thing, though.

I have added a column to display the added date (which I've renamed release date). Only issue there is you have to use PHPMYADMIN to edit the dates after they are added, but it's doable. The main reason I wanted to do that was so I could add upcoming products, but have them not show a review link until the release date. I can't for the life of me figure out how I compare today's date to that date in a bulletin template conditional, though. I suspect it's not possible.

Here's where I am so far. It looks quite good, I think, though the code and templates are probably now a hideous mess:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/productforums.php