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.

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

That said I'll take a look at the search bug and see if we can fix it.

I had to remove the mysql_real_escape_string() from around the format search input for it to work. Anything better I could replace it with? We use mysqli if that matters. Its working fine without any function wrapped around it, but not sure if that could lead to other issues on the textbox input on product title searches.

[GCC LLC]

I noticed that in your code, you don't include a link identifier on the mysql_real_escape_string:

if($vbulletin->GPC['title']){ $conditions .= " AND pfp.title LIKE '%". mysql_real_escape_string($vbulletin->GPC['title']) ."%'"; } // title of product

It should default to the last used connection, but in my case I think it's not. In the meantime, I've switched to mysql_escape_string() which appears to be working. Do you see any issues with this?

Also all new reviews go into moderation even though I have the option turned off and made sure the forum have all moderation turned off. Thought it might be a conflict with Glowhost so uninstalled that and they still get moderated.

[ynh]

Anyone have an idea of how to add an attachment option to the post new product page?

(productforums.php?do=addproduct)

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Every store in our industry has well over 100 manufactureres so if your going to support a mass import of products then users are going to get a list of companies that stops in the middle because of the 100 set limit whether its manageable or not. I agree there has to more search options but you will still run into this error with bulk imports.

Sounds like my comment didn't come ascross right...

The business we run that inspired PRF processes something like 14 million products nightly from hundreds of thousands of manufacturers. And that's small potatoes compared to what our partners do... There's no problem with the structure of how the brands are stored whether you have 1, 100 or 10,000. We have the limit clause in for database speed but as you noted, it's no big deal to remove and perhaps something we can make an option of.

The issue however is in the presentation and resulting UX.

PRF was designed for the typical community owner who, to this point, is generally adding at most a few hundred products from a few dozen brands. As such a dropdown works fine.

However at a scale of say 50 [you'd have to test to find the actual threshold] dropdown lists become unusable for the user. Technically they still work, still load but it's just not feasible to scroll and mentally process. Thus you either need an open search field or progressive autofill...

While it's not a built in feature we designed PRF as a starting place to cover 90% and this is one of those 10% items worth customizing given your particular use yourself. But of course that's just my $0.02

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by ynh

Anyone have an idea of how to add an attachment option to the post new product page?

(productforums.php?do=addproduct)

There is no simple way to do this. You can however very easily add them to the first post in the product's thread

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

I noticed that in your code, you don't include a link identifier on the mysql_real_escape_string:

if($vbulletin->GPC['title']){ $conditions .= " AND pfp.title LIKE '%". mysql_real_escape_string($vbulletin->GPC['title']) ."%'"; } // title of product

Escaping the string is essential for preventing injections so good call on working through that...

We'll be redoing the search function a bit in light of your bug report and will try to test with a few mySQLi connections as well.

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Also all new reviews go into moderation even though I have the option turned off and made sure the forum have all moderation turned off. Thought it might be a conflict with Glowhost so uninstalled that and they still get moderated.

Does the forum allow for new replies? Closed forums seem to have this issue...

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Sounds like my comment didn't come ascross right...

The business we run that inspired PRF processes something like 14 million products nightly from hundreds of thousands of manufacturers. And that's small potatoes compared to what our partners do... There's no problem with the structure of how the brands are stored whether you have 1, 100 or 10,000. We have the limit clause in for database speed but as you noted, it's no big deal to remove and perhaps something we can make an option of.

The issue however is in the presentation and resulting UX.

PRF was designed for the typical community owner who, to this point, is generally adding at most a few hundred products from a few dozen brands. As such a dropdown works fine.

However at a scale of say 50 [you'd have to test to find the actual threshold] dropdown lists become unusable for the user. Technically they still work, still load but it's just not feasible to scroll and mentally process. Thus you either need an open search field or progressive autofill...

While it's not a built in feature we designed PRF as a starting place to cover 90% and this is one of those 10% items worth customizing given your particular use yourself. But of course that's just my $0.02

I'm not disagreeing, just stating that you could come across this when importing large amounts of products. Now if someone searches this thread, they will know why.

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Does the forum allow for new replies? Closed forums seem to have this issue...

Yes, everything is open. We are using the forumdisplay.


User posts a review. It gets put in moderation, but it still posts the review.

Now it gets strange. It posts the review twice (within the same post). You will get <review><br><review> all within the postbit. The <br> is visible. This seems to happen with users copying and pasting with or without WYSIWYG on.

Now usually as we know, a new post will update the sorting order (newest post first). Even though the review is posted, the forumdisplay will not update the sorting order until I approve the post (review).

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Yes, everything is open. We are using the forumdisplay.


User posts a review. It gets put in moderation, but it still posts the review.

Now it gets strange. It posts the review twice (within the same post). You will get <review><br><review> all within the postbit. The <br> is visible. This seems to happen with users copying and pasting with or without WYSIWYG on.

Now usually as we know, a new post will update the sorting order (newest post first). Even though the review is posted, the forumdisplay will not update the sorting order until I approve the post (review).

So I'm clear only 1 post is made, but with duplicate content in it, and it's always in moderation?

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

So I'm clear only 1 post is made, but with duplicate content in it, and it's always in moderation?

Yes. User "submits" one review but the content gets posted twice within postbit with a visible <br> in between.

Every review goes into moderation even though I have moderation turned off within the plugin as well as in the forum. I don't think it shows the <br> and duplicate content within the moderation window. I will check and see next time it happen.