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.

[glen290]

Been looking for a mod like this for a while, its perfect for my site, so have installed it on my test board to try it out, only issue i have found so far is when i click on add new product it says this feature is not currently in use, had a look through setting, but cant see what i need to change to get this to work ?

[vilambara]

not compatible with 4.1.7. any updations?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by vilambara

not compatible with 4.1.7. any updations?

You'll need to be more specific to get any support.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by glen290

Been looking for a mod like this for a while, its perfect for my site, so have installed it on my test board to try it out, only issue i have found so far is when i click on add new product it says this feature is not currently in use, had a look through setting, but cant see what i need to change to get this to work ?

You need to have configured the default forum option and of course enabled the option to let members post products. Both are in the Product Forums admin options.

[vilambara]

Originally Posted by Ted S

You'll need to be more specific to get any support.

sorry wrongly posted here..instead other thread..

[glen290]

Originally Posted by Ted S

You need to have configured the default forum option and of course enabled the option to let members post products. Both are in the Product Forums admin options.

Sorted now thanks, I hadnt set the new product forum ID.

[glen290]

Have a few bugs would like to report..
When a member adds a product, it come up with this is an empty post, I have selected the correct forum ID (in this case 105) and give the forum the permissions to able to post to it.
Also I have set the screen new reviews to no, but they still need moderating.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by glen290

Have a few bugs would like to report..
When a member adds a product, it come up with this is an empty post, I have selected the correct forum ID (in this case 105) and give the forum the permissions to able to post to it.

Are you moderating new products? Where do you see this output? Does forum 105 have Product Forums enabled?

Also I have set the screen new reviews to no, but they still need moderating.

Does the forum they are posting the thread to require moderation?

[cowcowcow]

Thanks for this Ted S, this is something I will definitely follow closely.

At the moment its not as developed as I'd like it to be and Ill just wait a few more months till all these features are added before installing it. Certainty won't mind paying up for a premium version of this with all the planned / suggested features. I mean just got custom simple custom coding done and it already cost me a few hundred and i'm sure theres alot of people like me who have been looking for this and will pay good money, if it was something truly stand out.

Suggestions:

I think more attention should be paid to the formatting with pre-defined categories. So for example if we choose "book" category the pre-defined style (you can customise) is chosen. The reviews can have their own custom fields like "readability of book" which you can enter unique to that category. And when the review comes out its automatically formatted such that image size is smaller(than say travel), etc, i mean just provide a template for each new category which we can edit ourselves would be good enough.

Another suggestion would be displaying similar products, having a filtered search system, making use of the tags to find similar products.

Also more attention should be given to people who leave reviews, a "read all reviews" below thier name, option for them to be a top 10 reviewer, average rating of their reviews, how many reviews they gave, etc.

And of course these implemented in the CP so pple can choose to use them or not.

Hope these suggestions help build a even strong product, will check in again soon

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by cowcowcow

At the moment its not as developed as I'd like it to be and Ill just wait a few more months till all these features are added before installing it. Certainty won't mind paying up for a premium version of this with all the planned / suggested features. I mean just got custom simple custom coding done and it already cost me a few hundred and i'm sure theres alot of people like me who have been looking for this and will pay good money, if it was something truly stand out.

We don't do premium mods, over the long term it's just not financially practical to support someone for years over a few dollar sale, nor is mods our business model. But thanks for the vote of confidence in the idea!

As far as your suggestions -- great comments all around.

Of course there's always a line between a solid general mod and something specific to a particular site. Category dimensions are great but vary widely and it's just not practical for us to build books vs dvds for a handful of sites when one site will use "readability" as 1/10 and another prefers "page turning" as a yes/no even within the category. Thus we're looking at custom fields that would let you build in what you want.

The same issue is of course true in the mod in general. Putting out a release with a core feature is something we feel benefits the community and us but while we'd like to tweak it into something that really breaks the mold not just for forums [i think even basic structured data does that] but for the ecomm / online research world, there has to be enough use to justify it.

Usage grows over time and we tend to let it mature before going as far as we'd like to make sure what we're doing is indeed useful.