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 deverill2010

Woo I've reinstalled this after my troubles last time, have created a product and have managed to leave a review!

The only thing is I don't see the 'star' images anywhere, where are they meant to show up too?

Check the source on the page and insure the images are in the right folder for your forum.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by MySaltyreef

okay so its me then not understanding, i have the hack installed and appears to be working, so i create the product and a member reviews it ? i don't sell off my forum but if a member buys something cool and wants to show it off as well as do a review on it then this hack would work for me if admin didn't have to create anything if the member could upload his pic with a few things to fill out and select a category set out by admin and so forth, what i was asking is if you are working on extending the hack or keeping it as it is

Here's how it works...

Someone [an admin, a member, whoever] creates a product.

Then other people [members] come in and write reviews for that product.

Thus what you end up with is structured product reviews so rather than trying to sort through 500,000 pages of random posts, people coming to your site can view a "master" product page with the reviews following it.

If you just want to let people review whatever they feel like without products you would need an unstructured approach. That's not an extension of this mod, it's an entirely different app and technically a reduction.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by nibb

This addon is very nice but sadly I think it has a bug. I can only post a review as admin. As users I always get the error about the Minimum Review Length, I changed this setting multiple time and regardless of what you type in the review it will always complain it does not have the minimum characters. As admin I did not had any troubles posting a review.

This bug is related to the editor which has far too many permutations and should never have been added

Should be fixed in 1.3.0 due out soon but in the meantime you can remove the check by editing forum/productforums.php to either comment out or remove line 382

// if(strlen($comments) < $vbulletin->options['prodforums_minreview']){ $errors .= "Your review comments must be at least ". $vbulletin->options['prodforums_minreview'] ." characters long.<br />"; } // must have rating picked

[deverill2010]

I've got it, I didn't upload it to my custom style but the main images folder instead doh!

Ted I don't know if you will help but if you don't ask you don't get.

How would I go about pulling the image to show on the product forums page? So it would be the image of the product and the the title etc to the right of it?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by PattiOz

I am using XAMPP on localhost: PHP (5.3.1)

Attempting to remove all files and reinstall now

OK just removed everything, reinstalled a new download, same error.

Core settings and Style settings work fine.

Here is the code as it looks in Notepad++

Ok well I've got no idea what would be throwing out that error from your server / install but it's not the script [incomplete end statements are critical, meaning if one has it, everyone would also have it].

If you try removing all of the function between start and end you can debug block by block.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

I've got it, I didn't upload it to my custom style but the main images folder instead doh!

Ted I don't know if you will help but if you don't ask you don't get.

How would I go about pulling the image to show on the product forums page? So it would be the image of the product and the the title etc to the right of it?

You wait for 1.3.0.

Or you hack in fields for thumbnails to the admin, query hooks on the front end and change the template output to include them.

[deverill2010]

Ah heck I'll wait for 1.3.0 then lol. I'm just glad it's working for me now!

[looker2010]

Can someone assist- this mod broke my Mobile template. http://www.beektime.com/forum.php

On a separate note- what is the easiest and most logical way to have members suggest products to review? Sub forum? Email? Just looking for the best practice.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by looker2010

Can someone assist- this mod broke my Mobile template. http://www.beektime.com/forum.php

You'll need to be more specific. "Broke" is not something we can diagnose, especially since the mod doesn't have any specific mobile functionality.

On a separate note- what is the easiest and most logical way to have members suggest products to review? Sub forum? Email? Just looking for the best practice.

Allow members to add products [global and usergroup level setting]. Then approve the ones you want to add.

[deverill2010]

Where on the front end do they add products? I can't seem to find this.