Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Allow users to rate individual posts

Helpful Answers has been used to record over 6 MILLION times on more than 2,000 forums. If you're not using HA your users are looking for it!

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 to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the value of each post.

Designed to be flexible, HA has over 30 configurable settings:

• Use image or text ratings AJAX or traditional links.
• Offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• Turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• Decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• Audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• Ban specific members from using the system.
• Customize the message shown after a post is rated.
• Show a page with the top helpful posts.
• Show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Hide posts that rate "too low"
• Template driven so you can customize it all for 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.

Modification Installation [Must Read]:

Step 1: Upload the addon files found in the upload/ folder to your forum directory
Step 2: Install the plugin through your vB Administration area
Step 3: Configure settings & enable the mod in individual forums

You must configure settings & enable forums before voting will show up.
Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):

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. You can disable this through the admin.

Mod Philosophy -- Drive Your Own Success:

All of my mods are inspired by my work in digital marketing and are designed to drive registrations, interaction or other engagement activities the core platform does not address.

Each is designed to fit a general need by providing a starting point but it's on you to decide how to make things work to their best possible outcome. Feel free to suggest what you'd like to see next but don't wait to have what everyone else has; figure out what your forum needs and customize away.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by QFIT

I came to post pretty much the same as the last poster. How do I get a list of the most helpful posters? I think this is more useful than the posters that used the function the most.

This is not something included but the data is all there (in the user table) waiting for you to build whatever display you want.

[QFIT]

Can you give me the SQL query?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by QFIT

Can you give me the SQL query?

There's two columns in the usertable to use:

hagoodrank - which is the number of good rankings
hatotalrank - which is the total votes on threads

You can use either / both to sort as you see fit.

[Meestor_X]

Sorry if this question has already been answered... (TL;DR and I did do a search on this thread and didn't get any relevant hits)

Can a thread be sorted by # of upvotes? That is to say, can the posts with the highest "good" rating be shown first? Are there other sort options too?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Meestor_X

Sorry if this question has already been answered... (TL;DR and I did do a search on this thread and didn't get any relevant hits)

Can a thread be sorted by # of upvotes? That is to say, can the posts with the highest "good" rating be shown first? Are there other sort options too?

Not as a default option.

Thread sorting is assumed to be by date and us hardcoded into the system so while it's very much possible, it requires some manual hacking to accomplish.

Look at line 881 / 919 / 1002 of showthread.php

[Meestor_X]

Thank you for your quick reply!
Alternately, a link to the highest rated answer shown in the first post would be good.
I'm looking to see if there's a substitute for Stack Exchange-type question/answer threads that can be done within VB, and it seems like your Mod might be a workable solution.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Meestor_X

Thank you for your quick reply!
Alternately, a link to the highest rated answer shown in the first post would be good.
I'm looking to see if there's a substitute for Stack Exchange-type question/answer threads that can be done within VB, and it seems like your Mod might be a workable solution.

There is a feature to enable a link to the top post though if you want a true q/a system I'd suggest the hack which will require a couple joins and a few conditionals. Shouldn't be crazy.

[Meestor_X]

Originally Posted by Ted S

There is a feature to enable a link to the top post though if you want a true q/a system I'd suggest the hack which will require a couple joins and a few conditionals. Shouldn't be crazy.

Very cool! Would you be able to point me to information on that hack?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Meestor_X

Very cool! Would you be able to point me to information on that hack?

Sorry, "it" being a concept. Don't know that it's been actually done.

[Cyclist]

Everything works fine. Thanks!

Is is possible to translate the phrases that appear on the users and the posts? How would that be possible?