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.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by popowich

Is there a way to allow guests to rate posts?

I'd even be OK with a cookie check that only lets them rate up to 10 posts before registering.

My forum is mostly visitor traffic reading how-to information.

It would be great if this worked like a visit to Microsoft support sites and you get to rate the thread.

The simple thumbs up or down is fine, I just want guests to be able to rate the posts too.

Thank you for this product.

-Raymond

Sorry but guest ranking isn't possible with the feature currently but it wouldn't be that hard to make it work. Just remove the few places that check if someone is a user and you're all set (ok ok so that's not super easy either).

[Regs]

Originally Posted by Ted S

That's a good spot or you can use it lower after the thank you hack. It just depends on where you want things to show.

Awesome mod Ted S!

The same issue appears for people with the blog mod installed (blog this post icon). Perhaps there is a better way to do the automatic template edits/insertions to take this into account?

Cheers,

Regs.

[Ted S]

Unfortunately automated is automated... there's one variable and a lot of plugins use it. I've done my best to try and make this addon execute after others but I can't make things automated without hooking in at the same place...

Thus the option exists for a manual override.

[Regs]

Thanks Ted, wasn't aware of the one variable thing.

Cheers,

Regs.

[dooch]

getting a mysql error on product import

Database error in vBulletin 3.8.1:

Invalid SQL:

				REPLACE INTO setting
					(varname, grouptitle, value, defaultvalue, datatype, optioncode, displayorder, advanced, volatile, validationcode, blacklist, product)
				VALUES
					(
					'helpans_manual',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					10,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_hidefirst',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					15,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_neg',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'1',
					'1',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					20,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_banned',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'',
					'',
					'text',
					'',
					30,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_top',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'1',
					'1',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					40,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_self',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					45,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_min',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					50,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_minnum',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'10',
					'10',
					'text',
					'',
					55,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_limit',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'',
					'',
					'text',
					'',
					60,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_stats_votes',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					70,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_stats_ranks',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					80,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_stats_ten',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					85,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_gettop',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					90,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_rank_ten',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'0',
					'0',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					100,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	),
	(
					'helpans_report',
					'helpfulanswers',
					'1',
					'1',
					'boolean',
					'yesno',
					200,
					0,
					1,
					'',
					0,
					'helpful_answers'
	);

MySQL Error   : Data truncated for column 'datatype' at row 4
Error Number  : 1265
Request Date  : Friday, February 27th 2009 @ 10:02:24 AM
Error Date    : Friday, February 27th 2009 @ 10:02:25 AM
Script        : http://www.****.com/admincp/plugin.php?do=productimport
Referrer      : http://www.****.com/admincp/plugin.php?do=productadd
IP Address    : ****
Username      : ****
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.51a-community-nt

EDIT - I think the error is at my end of things... ;(

[dooch]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Identify the top rated post.

Step 1 - Enable the top rated post feature from your Helpful Answers Settings.
Step 2 - Add the code:

<if condition="$threadinfo[toppost] == $post[postid]">This is the top rated post!</code>

To your postbit or postbig_legacy template

This can be changed around to add colors, an icon or anything else you want.

================================================== ==========================

This is the bit im most interested in. Unfortunatley I cant get this code to work, even if I alter it to this... any ideas?

<if condition="$threadinfo[toppost] == $post[postid]">This is the top rated post!</if>

[star88]

Originally Posted by dooch

This is the bit im most interested in. Unfortunatley I cant get this code to work, even if I alter it to this... any ideas?

<if condition="$threadinfo[toppost] == $post[postid]">This is the top rated post!</if>

I enabled the top rated post feature from Helpful Answers settings. I added <if condition="$threadinfo[toppost] == $post[postid]">This is the top rated post!</if> in the postbit template. Unfortunatly, it does not work.

[Ted S]

I'm working on the top post right now and will get back with some answers on how to use it and examples in a minute.

[Ted S]

The correct variable for this feature is $thread[toppost] not $threadinfo. My appologies for the mistake.

I will be posting a code snippit to allow you to highlight the top post in a few minutes...

[Ted S]

Instructions for how to highlight the top rated post have been added to my examples post.

I hope to offer this as an automated feature in the future.