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]

I may begin tackling adding on a way to calculate and display the top ranked products, unless you already have something like that in the works? I'm not 100% sure how to rank them yet, but I think it will need to be weighted against the total number of reviews and the score rather than just the score (ie. a product reviewed 10 times with a 4.9 rating would rank better than a product reviewed 1 time with a 5.0 rating) and also should take into consideration how recent the reviews are. I guess this would be sort of a "best of the most popular products" hack so to speak.

[Ted S]

PRF users, there's a release level update out today marked as 1.3.5 [skipping .3 and .4 as those were posted as patches].

This is a bug fix designed to address issues with moderated posts, blank reviews [too short & duplicate content] review links and a few other details that impacted a few, but not all sites. If you do not have any of these issues you do not need to upgrade.

To update install the new plugin file and upload/productforums.php into your forum folder. There no other changed files.

Thanks to GCC LLC for tracking down the moderation issue too.

[GCC LLC]

Also if anyone's interested, I added BMP support in the image resync functions. Some of the images at the remote URL from my XML feed were BMP and the image processing script at
includes/prodforums_uploader.php wouldn't process them. Here's the changes I made:

In the load() function, added:
elseif( $this->image_type == IMAGETYPE_BMP ) {

$this->image = imagecreatefromwbmp($filename);
return '.bmp';
}

In the save() function, added:
elseif( $image_type == IMAGETYPE_BMP ) {
$white = 0x00FFFFFF;
imagewbmp($this->image,$filename,$white);
}

(Note: I defined the color for white for processing bitmaps because in the imagewbmp() function, it defaults everything to a black alpha channel (background) - so you may want to adjust this to your own preferences)

In the output() function, added:
elseif( $image_type == IMAGETYPE_BMP ) {

imagewbmp($this->image);
}

[Ted S]

Also while I will be supporting this update today I am out all of next week [and not just ignoring you]. Please continue to post as other members may help and I will review everything when I return.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

I may begin tackling adding on a way to calculate and display the top ranked products, unless you already have something like that in the works? I'm not 100% sure how to rank them yet, but I think it will need to be weighted against the total number of reviews and the score rather than just the score (ie. a product reviewed 10 times with a 4.9 rating would rank better than a product reviewed 1 time with a 5.0 rating) and also should take into consideration how recent the reviews are. I guess this would be sort of a "best of the most popular products" hack so to speak.

Are you thinking of this in place of the current productforums.php index or as a standalone feature [say a widget for the widebar]?

mySQL isn't great for formulas on the fly as they add load time but if it's just rating sum & count it's pretty simple.... I'll play around with some queries when I return after next week.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

Also if anyone's interested, I added BMP support in the image resync functions. Some of the images at the remote URL from my XML feed were BMP and the image processing script at
includes/prodforums_uploader.php wouldn't process them. Here's the changes I made:

Hate bmps and really should expand on this to convert them as well but this is very helpful. Thanks for the contribution, it will be rolled into 1.3.6

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Are you thinking of this in place of the current productforums.php index or as a standalone feature [say a widget for the widebar]?

mySQL isn't great for formulas on the fly as they add load time but if it's just rating sum & count it's pretty simple.... I'll play around with some queries when I return after next week.

In our case we use the forum display and don't really send anyone directly to productforums.php, so I'd need to think outside the box a little on how/where to display it. More of an idea at the moment rather than anything.

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Hate bmps and really should expand on this to convert them as well but this is very helpful. Thanks for the contribution, it will be rolled into 1.3.6

Makes two of us, that's the reason I added that. Our XML feed was full of 300kb+ .BMP files that were being loaded on every page view. Hosting them locally, the JPGs are down to 12-15kb and page times are much faster for the end user.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

In our case we use the forum display and don't really send anyone directly to productforums.php, so I'd need to think outside the box a little on how/where to display it. More of an idea at the moment rather than anything.

Would a sidebar widget work? If not maybe a forum block above the threads with product photos [remember the old photopost integration?]

[imported_dfmafia]

installing and testing latest and greatest!
thnx agian Ted S!