Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Post Rating System (plus many sub-features)

Note: While this modification is updated for compatibility, I am only developing features for the 4.x version. I understand many sites continue to use 3.8 for a variety of reasons but dual developing takes time away from adding anything new. I encourage you to develop out your own change and share them back as no modification is ideal for every forum out of the box.

Every day your users contribute hundreds if not thousands of posts making it hard for new members and guests to separate out the best answers from those that are less helpful. The Helpful Answers System offers your members a quick way (AJAX) to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the benefits of each post.

Designed for maximum flexibility:


This addon is built to be flexible and offers several customization options including:

• The ability to show a user's vote stats in posts
• The ability to use image or text ratings.
• The ability to offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• The ability to turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• The ability to decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• The ability to audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• The ability to ban specific members from using the system.
• The ability to customize the AJAX message shown after a post is rated.
• The ability to edit all text and messages through phrases.
• The ability to show a page with the top helpful posts.
• The ability to show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Integration with the reputation system for ratings.
• Template driven display that can easily be customized to your forum.

For advanced users template conditionals and variables let you further extend the functionality to color highlight good or bad posts, include ratings in user?s profiles and much more.

Load & Scale:
This addon is designed to work with small to large sites and is currently being used by sites with more than 2 million posts. If you have questions about integrating with your big board please contact me.

Modification Installation:
This addon requires uploading multiple files, installing a vBulletin product and enabling the feature in any forums you wish. No template modifications are required. Please see the included install file for detailed instructions.

If you are not seeing the rating bar double check that you have enabled the feature in the forum you are in and insure the Manual Template override option is not enabled.

Rating Review & Deletion:
To identify and remove abuse a reporting system is included with this addon and can be found in your vBulletin ACP under the Helpful Answers tab. Through this panel you will be able to view a user's overall rating history and individual ratings and can remove either if necessary. Users can also be explicitly banned from the system.

Reputation System Integration:
Helpful Answers can be extended to directly tie into your reputation system giving users positive or negative points based on the ratings of their posts. There are numerous options on how to handle ratings that can be found in a separate Helpful Answers Reputation part of your vBulletin Settings page.

External Integration:
vB Plaza Modification - http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359
vB Experience - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199556

Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):
vBulletin forums reach millions of consumers around the world yet little is known about their habits and opinions. This addon was released to the public out of requests but also to further the research of forum user's behaviors and actions through collecting the most basic data on thousands of sites.

By default this addon will pass basic rating data (positive or negative) to a 3rd party site for statistical purposes. Only the most basic data is captured (the vote and your site name) and no user information or specific forum details are logged, not even an IP address.

While you may disable this feature through the administrative options I ask that you consider leaving it in place to help this research effort and insure the continued support of the addon.

The tracking feature uses the php library cURL on a 5 second timeout. If cURL is not installed this option is automatically disabled.

Updates:
- 5/13/2011 - Release of 2.0.6 minor bug fix
- 08/31/2009 - Release of 2.0.0
- 08/07/2009 - Release of 1.9.5 stable

Other Versions:
This addon will work with 3.7 but to avoid issues with different code versions please see the 3.7 version thread here.

Before you download this modification please remember this is a free tool provided as a courtesy to you and support responses are subject to the availability of the author and other members. If you are looking for a professionally supported system this is not the solution for you.

[Saviour]

Apparently, the links on the helpfulanswers.php pages for that particular topic...link to the same post.

Page 1 link: http://glitchpc.com/forums/showthrea...=2919#post2919

Page 2 link: http://glitchpc.com/forums/showthrea...=2919#post2919

[Megatr0n]

Originally Posted by Ted S

This weekend.

Weekend has past. :P

[Saviour]

<a href="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost.php?p=1876515&postcount=1092" target="_blank">https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showp...postcount=1092</a>

Anyone?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Megatr0n

Weekend has past. :P

And I have completed this in 2.0.0 beta which I was not able to post last night. I will get it up this evening after doing a few more tests.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Saviour

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....postcount=1092

Anyone?

It's on the list for tonight...

[Ted S]

Hello Helpful Answers users. Today I am please to announce 2.0.0b which is a big number that includes a big feature long asked for (although the actual changes are rather small).

2.0 introduces user level stats on good votes, totalvotes and bad votes which you can put right into the postbit template using $post[hagoodrank] $post[hatotalrank] and $post[habadrank]

These stats combine a user's entire post history (votes on their posts) into simple numbers for your use.

Updating to 2.0 may take a few minutes as old votes are converted into the user profile. To reduce queries the user table is extended to offer both a good and total rank field.

2.0 requires uploading all .php files as well as updating the XML plugin and to use the new variables you will need to edit your postbit template as you see fit.

[digicom]

Thanks For Update Ted Aprrciated :up:

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Ted S

The top answers page will show each post as a different item. Are you sure this is a duplication of posts or could it just be two posts in the same thread?

Please use this file which will print out the query on both pages and then revert to the stable version.

Let me know the queries and I should be able to figure out why this is happening on your site.

[Chief Corn]

Originally Posted by Ted S

For your next step please try the attached helpfulanswers.php file which will tell you if a new record is being created or if there is an update. If there are already votes on a post you should ONLY get an update.

It's showing as updated. I also upgraded to the latest 2.0 and it still double posts. Don't worry about it though, it works as long as I don't clear votes, it's most likely a conflict with another mod.

[Saviour]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Please use this file which will print out the query on both pages and then revert to the stable version.

Let me know the queries and I should be able to figure out why this is happening on your site.

Uploaded that file...overwriting the current file. Using 1.9.5 of your mod and got the following error on the first page:

SELECT post.postid,post.title as posttile,helpfulpost.goodrank,helpfulpost.totalrank,helpfulpost.lastvote,
thread.threadid,thread.title as title,thread.postusername as postusername,forum.title as ftitle ,goodrank as avgrank

FROM vb_helpfulpost as helpfulpost
INNER JOIN vb_post AS post ON(helpfulpost.postid = post.postid)
INNER JOIN vb_thread AS thread ON(post.threadid = thread.threadid)
INNER JOIN vb_forum AS forum ON(thread.forumid = forum.forumid)
WHERE goodrank > 0


ORDER BY avgrank desc
LIMIT 0, 10

This was printed on the second page:

SELECT post.postid,post.title as posttile,helpfulpost.goodrank,helpfulpost.totalrank,helpfulpost.lastvote,
thread.threadid,thread.title as title,thread.postusername as postusername,forum.title as ftitle ,goodrank as avgrank

FROM vb_helpfulpost as helpfulpost
INNER JOIN vb_post AS post ON(helpfulpost.postid = post.postid)
INNER JOIN vb_thread AS thread ON(post.threadid = thread.threadid)
INNER JOIN vb_forum AS forum ON(thread.forumid = forum.forumid)
WHERE goodrank > 0


ORDER BY avgrank desc
LIMIT 10, 10

Reverting to my previous file...

Should I update to 2.0? Has it been fixed?