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]

Tips & Tricks Using Template Variables:

While the Helpful Answers section may appear to only add to a small part of your post it can be used much more extensively to change the color of an entire post, to add a special icon or just about anything else you like. Here are list of the variables available for your postbit and postbit_legacy templates.

$post[totalrank] - The total number of ratings
$post[goodrank] - The number of good ratings
$post[badrank] - The number of bad ratings
$post[helpfulgood] - True if the post is positive overall (more good than bad ratings)
$show[rate_helpfulanswer] - True if the user can rate the post (false if they are banned or have rated it).
$post[helpfulanswerid] - True if the user has already rated the post.
$post[hagoodrank] - The number of good votes the user's posts have
$post[hatotalrank] - The total rank the user's posts have
$post[habadrank] - The number of bad votes the user's posts have

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

Additional variables can also be found in the user's profile page (if enabled).

$helpfulposts[totalranks] - The total ratings of a member's ppsts
$helpfulposts[goodranks] - The total good ratings of a member's posts
$helpfulposts[badranks] - The total bad ratings of a member's posts

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

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="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid] AND THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread'">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.

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

Digg Like Ratings (Format: +6 Yes | No)
Step 1 - Open the template helpful_answers
Step 2 -
Replace the code

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 <phrase 1="$post[goodrank]" 2="$post[totalrank]">$vbphrase[helpfulanswer_x_out_of_y]</phrase>
</if>

With the new code:

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 + $post[goodrank]
</if>

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

(Thumb Up)...5 (Thumb Down)...2
Step 1 - Open the template helpful_answers
Step 2 -
Replace the code

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 <phrase 1="$post[goodrank]" 2="$post[totalrank]">$vbphrase[helpfulanswer_x_out_of_y]</phrase>
</if>

With the new code:

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 <img src="images/buttons/ha_thumbsup.gif" width="11" height="20" border="0" alt="Good" /> $post[goodrank] 
 <img src="images/buttons/ha_thumbsdn.gif" width="11" height="20" border="0" alt="Bad" /> $post[badrank] 
</if>

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

Highlighting the top rated post:

Step 1 - Set "Get Top Post per Thread" to on in your Helpful Answers settings.
Step 2 - Open your postbit or postbit_legacy template (whichever your forum uses)
Step 3 - Find all instances of class="alt1" and class="alt2"
Step 4 - At each instance add the following code directly after style="

<if condition="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid]">background-color:#CCCCCC;</if>

#CCCCCC is the color to highlight the post with. You may change this to another HTML Color Code

Step 5 - Repeat this for each instance (there may be as many as 5 depending on the template)
For example:

<td class="alt1" align="$stylevar[right]" style="<if condition="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid]">background-color:#CCCCCC;</if>border: $stylevar[cellspacing]px solid $stylevar[tborder_bgcolor]; border-$stylevar[left]: 0px; border-top: 0px">

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

Utility Scripts

Three utility scripts are attached to this post which you may need to use if you are modifying the addon or doing a special import. Each of these should be run from your admincp folder and deleted after use.

1. ha_userstats.php - This file will resync user votes for the postbit templates.
2 . ha_old.php - This file will resync vote summaries for version 1.5 and below.
3. ha_revote.php - This file will resync vote summaries for versions 1.6 and above

[esperone]

Sounds good but can u upload the mod files?

[Ted S]

Unfortunately there's no way to hide an addon while you're setting it up here. The files have been posted.

[mad@Max]

I get database error:

PHP Code:

Table 'db_vb.vb_helpfulanswer' doesn't exist 


Few questions.
This is don't work with ajax?
Why you don't use phrase in postbit?

[forexforum]

Does this mod add into the reputation/infraction points? It would be good if we can choose whether to allow infraction/rep points to be counted. It can be like, either choose one or both of the options. Thanks.

[Ted S]

forexforum,

This mod is intended for rating posts and does not deal with rating users or the reputation system. I'd love to get your thoughts if you feel there is a reason or way to relate the two.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by mad@Max

I get database error:

PHP Code:

Table 'db_vb.vb_helpfulanswer' doesn't exist 


Few questions.
This is don't work with ajax?
Why you don't use phrase in postbit?

Lots of questions!

1. Please check to see if you have the table helpfulanswer or anything related to it using phpMyAdmin or a similar tool. If not the installer was unable to create it but you can manually with the query:

CREATE TABLE `helpfulanswer` (
      `helpfulanswerid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
      `postid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `userid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `yesno` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      `dateline` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
      KEY `helpfulanswerid` (`helpfulanswerid`),
      KEY `postid` (`postid`),
      KEY `userid` (`userid`)
);

Be sure to add any prefix to the table.

2. This addon now offes ajax. Fun stuff!

3. As far as using phrases for the template look for an upgrade soon to handle that.

[Ted S]

I know I just released the core addon a few hours ago but after doing some additional work AJAX rankings are now supported.

[WoodiE]

Ted,

Just upgraded my forum to version 1.3 - the AJAX rocks! Nicely done.