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 Phrost

Thanks for the quick answer. Not being a developer, is there a guide to importing old GARS info, or even just old threads?

I have years worth of GARS reviews.

It's never even been mentioned before so sorry but no info...

I'm not familiar with GARS in the least so if you can explain how it worked [were there items, clustered reviews, single reviews, etc] I can get more specific.

[Phrost]

GARS basically added extra fields and custom templates to a thread on a per-forum basis. It allowed you to have multiple numeric rating fields for a product (associated with a single thread). Each thread would be the "parent", and subsequent posts could either review the product by rating the various options, or just make an ordinary post.

For example, we had Martial Arts School reviews broken down with ratings such as:

*Class Size
*Equipment
*Facility
*Striking
*Grappling

All 1-10 ratings.

It was basically an overlay onto existing threads, and had options to customize the layouts of said threads. You could either use it as a Reviews, or an Article system, by customizing those meta-templates, and then assigning them to individual forums.

Here's the only screenshot of GARS that I have left; it's from a sidebar added to a forum thread displaying the ratings.



On a personal note, it boggles my mind why this hasn't been remade or even incorporated into VB itself. When we upgraded to 4.0, we essentially turned thousands of reviews into ordinary forum threads, because we lost GARS.

[deverill2010]

Ted are there any upgrade instructions? I am running the previous version or previous two version. Basically the version before you added images on the view forum bit lol

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

Ted are there any upgrade instructions? I am running the previous version or previous two version. Basically the version before you added images on the view forum bit lol

Upload all the files. Import the new product file. And if desired run the image sync routine in the AdminCP options. That's it.

And oh, if you have modified templates prepare to merge them.

[deverill2010]

I can't find the image sync...?

[deverill2010]

Ok I managed to get the image sync thing to work, however I don't see any images on the view forum bit, it looks as if it did before.

http://www.midwiferyonline.co.uk/productforums.php

http://www.midwiferyonline.co.uk/forums/7-The-Library

I have now lost all my images as I deleted them from the folder then tried to resync, how ever it didnt recreate the images.

I am trying to upload new ones but jus get this error -

Product Review Forums

Warning: imagejpeg() [function.imagejpeg]: Unable to open '../productimages/502d2feb1f375_full.jpg' for writing: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/prodforums_uploader.php on line 54

Warning: imagejpeg() [function.imagejpeg]: Unable to open '../productimages/502d2feb1f375_thumb.jpg' for writing: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/prodforums_uploader.php on line 54

Warning: imagejpeg() [function.imagejpeg]: Unable to open '../productimages/502d2feb1f375_small.jpg' for writing: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/prodforums_uploader.php on line 54

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

Ok I managed to get the image sync thing to work, however I don't see any images on the view forum bit, it looks as if it did before.

http://www.midwiferyonline.co.uk/productforums.php

http://www.midwiferyonline.co.uk/forums/7-The-Library

I have now lost all my images as I deleted them from the folder then tried to resync, how ever it didnt recreate the images.

I am trying to upload new ones but jus get this error -

Product Review Forums

Warning: imagejpeg() [function.imagejpeg]: Unable to open '../productimages/502d2feb1f375_full.jpg' for writing: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/prodforums_uploader.php on line 54

Warning: imagejpeg() [function.imagejpeg]: Unable to open '../productimages/502d2feb1f375_thumb.jpg' for writing: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/prodforums_uploader.php on line 54

Warning: imagejpeg() [function.imagejpeg]: Unable to open '../productimages/502d2feb1f375_small.jpg' for writing: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/prodforums_uploader.php on line 54

Your settings are incorrect and the script can not create images. Double check the path for where images should go [you need to work from root so /home/mysite/forum/products/ or such] and set the folder to 0755 writeable.

Once that's complete and you can upload one image re-run the importer which will try to salvage the old images [if not I can show you a query to get them back and then let you import then again].

[deverill2010]

Ok the directory route is right now and I have uplaoded one image which is showing on the product itself and and the productsforum.php. However the image hasn't replaced the forum icons.

I have ran the image sync and ma missing all previous images so if you could give me that query, that would be much appreciated.

[fechten]

Hey there. I've been reading through and couldn't find the answer to this question.

Right now, the product reviews are sorted by the date the thread/product was created. How do I set the forum to show by latest reply and how do we get productforums.php to show a list of categories and then latest reviews below that? (Or just latest reviews?)

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by fechten

Hey there. I've been reading through and couldn't find the answer to this question.

Right now, the product reviews are sorted by the date the thread/product was created. How do I set the forum to show by latest reply and how do we get productforums.php to show a list of categories and then latest reviews below that? (Or just latest reviews?)

The first issue requires a hack as [currently] we're looking at the product table rather than the reviews one. You could either add a column for last reviewed or change the table query around to do a JOIN statement.

The second change also requires a quick hack to the code to add in the drop down list. You can basically copy how the manufacturer dropdown works or wait for the next release as this sounds like it's worth being added in.