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.

[bigtree]

:down: too bad, you have a nice clean product here but is missing something major IMO.

[Goatpod]

Hi Ted, thanks for the updates. Just noticed on the Admin page, however, when trying to approve some reviews that there's only one page of 25 products listed without the option to move onto the next 25. Is it something I've missed or is it missing?

I've attached a shot of that screen if it helps.

[Volvoholic]

Hi,

I have two problems which I hope you can help.

1) Productforums.php does not load when I click on the forum enabled for reviews. I have made the changes to forumdisplay.php shown in the install file. When I tried to paste the productforum URL into the forum link in the forum manager, I get the Browse Product & Reviews page but when I click on see all reviews I keep getting bumped back to the productforums page.

2) I cant delete product categories. I get "Review ID not specified" when clicking on yes during the confirmation stage.

Great mod by the way - much appreciated.

[Killhunter]

Originally Posted by Ted S

vB4 licenses don't expire last I checked. And if your license has expired, how are you downloading mods?

Sorry, didnt meant that in that way, of course my license is ok. Anyway i cant update, so could you please add this feature? I do not want to spend 120$ or more for the update.

[The Ottoman]

Originally Posted by bigtree

Bummer, then it is still of no use to me.

Creating a product for review the way you have it now is so slow. It takes forever to add information compared to being able to copy/paste. You have to put all the html in!

Having to write in all that html when a simple paste would get it done would make your product right on.

Actually, as someone who's just imported about 500 products into his install, allow me to give you some of my lessons learned:

Through some pretty easy scripting in Excel (predefining the URL to point to the product), joining some fields together and some unique items specific to my install; I was able to import all of the items in about an hours worth of research work and about a minute of actual processing work.

Doing this manually, it was taking me anywhere between 60-90 seconds per item, and that was with a copy/paste of HTML formatted data. So I saved myself atleast a half hour of data entry (and my sanity), and I've got it set up where I can throw in thousands of products in the future in quite literally under 5 minutes.

Now, that's just me - and I was not happy to look at an XML import versus a csv import which I was comfortable with. I'm sold on this method now.

I think what your issue stems from is that you have WYSIWYG data and you don't know how to capture that data with it's HTML sourcing data intact. If we could figure that out, would you try the XML import?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by bigtree

:down: too bad, you have a nice clean product here but is missing something major IMO.

That's the great thing about a user, it just needs to work for you and anything else you shouldn't use.

When you make a mod things get tricky as everyone has different needs so you start with what you feel will work for the most possible people and then watch feedback to see if you were wrong.

Anything more than a stylized list won't survive the WYSIWYG which would make editing impossible for some users. Thus there's a decision to be made and when we built this mod we decided to focus on imports over copy & paste [true speed] and open areas over bulky editors [true flexibility]. That's our line, but we know it's not going to fit everyone's needs.

Again, thanks for the feedback and best of luck with your forum!

[The Ottoman]

Originally Posted by bigtree

As an example: If I wanted to copy product info off this site, how would you do this?:

http://www.rolandus.com/products/pro...94&ParentId=19

I went to the site, did a view source and grabbed the following from ln 104-125

<!-- features tab -->
<div id="c_features" class="activeblock detailblock tabbed_content">
<h3><strong>Compact 32-Key Model from the A-PRO Series</strong></h3>
<h3 class="silent">Features</h3>

<p>If you’re looking for keyboard controllers that you can use in the studio, on-stage, or anywhere you feel inspired, look no further than the A-300PRO. Combining the best of Roland engineering with Cakewalk’s legendary ease-of-use, the A-300PRO has the features and feel you need to get the most out of your music performances and productions.</p>

<ul>
	<li>Velocity-sensitive 32 keys with channel aftertouch</li>
	<li>Inspiring feel and response for serious players</li>
	<li>45 assignable controls: knobs, sliders, buttons, transport and more</li>
	<li>8 Dynamic Pads for finger drumming and MIDI triggering</li>
	<li>Sure-grip Pitch Bend/Modulation Stick</li>
	<li>Expand playability with sustain and expression pedals (available separately)</li>
	<li>USB Bus Powered — no AC adaptor required (AC adaptor is an optional)</li>
	<li>Durable Roland-quality manufacturing and craftsmanship</li>
	<li>Bundled with the Cakewalk Production Plus Pack including three incredible instruments and production software</li>
	<li>Works with any DAW on Mac or PC</li>
	<li>Supports Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard</li>
</ul>
</div><!-- /features -->

I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it with XML feeds and alike that the owner of the site may or may not be interested in giving you access to. But a rather lo-tek way to achieve some thing similar would be to get a program to scrape the entire site like HTTrack and then scour the results looking for all instances of the data between "<!-- features tab -->" and "<!-- /features -->".

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by The Ottoman

Doing this manually, it was taking me anywhere between 60-90 seconds per item, and that was with a copy/paste of HTML formatted data. So I saved myself atleast a half hour of data entry (and my sanity), and I've got it set up where I can throw in thousands of products in the future in quite literally under 5 minutes.

Thanks so much for sharing this.

Developing something you get to decide where you want to draw the line and while I'm sure people would like other ways to add products, I really believe that an import is the only way to go. The manual entry page is really more about formatting or reviewing an entry here and there than adding.

No matter how you do it, copy & paste thinking just doesn't scale well.

My team processes something like 10 million products [not to this mod but to a system that the mod is based on] a night from a dozen vendors all of whom format and update differently so we've become pretty familiar with every option and while we debated offering csv/tab, XML is just safer when you're dealing with rich content and an infinite number of configurations.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Killhunter

Sorry, didnt meant that in that way, of course my license is ok. Anyway i cant update, so could you please add this feature? I do not want to spend 120$ or more for the update.

If you have 4.0, you have "Free updates for this version" but I digress...

The mod is already build to parse data from 4.0.x as well as 4.1.x, it just doesn't display the editor. I can't justify development hours to support a very dated version of the software but you can switch to a editor-less format by hacking the template --

Edit template prodforums_review_create

1 - Remove the javascript function from the <form> tag

2 - Remove {vb:raw messagearea}

3 - Remove <script type="text/javascript" src="clientscript/vbulletin_ajax_suggest.js?v={vb:raw vboptions.simpleversion}"></script>

4 - Add the following code and format to fit your style / width needs

<div class="blockrow">
                                <label for="comments">Review</label>
                                <textarea class="primary textbox" id="comments" name="comments">{vb:raw comments}</textarea>
                            </div>

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Goatpod

Hi Ted, thanks for the updates. Just noticed on the Admin page, however, when trying to approve some reviews that there's only one page of 25 products listed without the option to move onto the next 25. Is it something I've missed or is it missing?

I've attached a shot of that screen if it helps.

We just figured you'd deal with the first 25 before any more

Ok, ok, that's a bug. We'll updated it soon.