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.

[Tom Kagan]

Nice product - well coded. Kudos!

A couple of nitpicks:

• Still some usage of '&' in some urls instead of '&'
• No need for './' when specifying href in anchor elements
• Hardcoded 'images/buttons' instead of using {vb:stylevar imgdir_button}
• Hardcoded <img> elements in .xml file lines 934-946 instead of in template
• Still using vb3.x syntax to specify stylevar color on <hr> which obviously doesn't work on vb4.x
• Still using vb3.x post url syntax 'showthread.php?p=<post#>#post<post#> to jump to post from stat screen instead of vb4.x canonical syntax 'showthread.php?t=<thread#>&viewfull=1&p=<post#>#p ost<post#>'
• Erroneous double call to $templater->render() in helpfulanswers.php lines 510 & 532
• Not really a need for a 2nd code path in helpfulanswers.php for 'guestrate' param. The 'rate' param path could just check if user is logged in.
• vb parameter 'sessionurl' and/or 'sessionurl_q' should be used in all cases
• Urls to posts should be run through the 'Friendly Urls' munger.
• Soft deleted posts should not show up in helpfulanswers statistics; user totals updated accordingly.
• Hard deleted posts should have helpfulanswer ratings on post also deleted
• Option 'Enable Single Post Voting' would probably be more useful per forum instead of global
• A minimum rep amount might be nice when using user's rep power or percentage
• 'Least Helpful Answers' stats/marking would be nice instead of just ignoring them.
• When you get it working, anonymous reporting should use class_vurl instead of curl
• Admincp deleting post ratings does not update helpfulpost
• Admincp option 'Enable Single Post Voting' is missing descriptive phrase due to phrase name misspelling
• Admincp phrases should be in own group instead of spread to various preexisting groups. There also appears to be some redundancies.
• Admincp 'Rating History and Editing' & 'Bulk Forum Enabler' should instead be in maintenance block
• Admincp needs way to repair/recalculate user totals due to system error/User merging/deleting etc.
• Admincp templates should be in own group instead of 'Help Templates'
• Using 'onmouseover', 'onmouseout' should be removed in favor of css 'hover'
• Using 'onclick' for AJAX call should be removed in favor of progressive enhancement style javascript. If done, <script> element could be moved to just before </body>

If the above were implemented along with some of your enhancements already planned, this hack would go from 'great' to 'near perfect'.

[tightjeansforum]

I have this installed and turned on in every forum but I dont see the rep system.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by ayam

i don't want to mess up anything with the coding or the forum so better to play safe, waiting for ur update

1 more question, is it normal when someone rating a post, they will be brought back to the 1st post?

Are you not using ajax on your site?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Tom Kagan

Nice product - well coded. Kudos!

A couple of nitpicks:

• Still some usage of '&' in some urls instead of '&amp;'
• No need for './' when specifying href in anchor elements
• Hardcoded 'images/buttons' instead of using {vb:stylevar imgdir_button}
• Hardcoded <img> elements in .xml file lines 934-946 instead of in template
• Still using vb3.x syntax to specify stylevar color on <hr> which obviously doesn't work on vb4.x
• Still using vb3.x post url syntax 'showthread.php?p=<post#>#post<post#> to jump to post from stat screen instead of vb4.x canonical syntax 'showthread.php?t=<thread#>&viewfull=1&p=<post#>#p ost<post#>'
• Erroneous double call to $templater->render() in helpfulanswers.php lines 510 & 532
• Not really a need for a 2nd code path in helpfulanswers.php for 'guestrate' param. The 'rate' param path could just check if user is logged in.
• vb parameter 'sessionurl' and/or 'sessionurl_q' should be used in all cases
• Urls to posts should be run through the 'Friendly Urls' munger.
• Soft deleted posts should not show up in helpfulanswers statistics; user totals updated accordingly.
• Hard deleted posts should have helpfulanswer ratings on post also deleted
• Option 'Enable Single Post Voting' would probably be more useful per forum instead of global
• A minimum rep amount might be nice when using user's rep power or percentage
• 'Least Helpful Answers' stats/marking would be nice instead of just ignoring them.
• When you get it working, anonymous reporting should use class_vurl instead of curl
• Admincp deleting post ratings does not update helpfulpost
• Admincp option 'Enable Single Post Voting' is missing descriptive phrase due to phrase name misspelling
• Admincp phrases should be in own group instead of spread to various preexisting groups. There also appears to be some redundancies.
• Admincp 'Rating History and Editing' & 'Bulk Forum Enabler' should instead be in maintenance block
• Admincp needs way to repair/recalculate user totals due to system error/User merging/deleting etc.
• Admincp templates should be in own group instead of 'Help Templates'
• Using 'onmouseover', 'onmouseout' should be removed in favor of css 'hover'
• Using 'onclick' for AJAX call should be removed in favor of progressive enhancement style javascript. If done, <script> element could be moved to just before </body>

If the above were implemented along with some of your enhancements already planned, this hack would go from 'great' to 'near perfect'.

That's one heck of a list. Thanks.

[Tom Kagan]

Originally Posted by Ted S

That's one heck of a list. Thanks.

You are welcome. I help out a friend who runs a large site on a shoestring. I take my code audits seriously. Especially considering some of the other hacks I've looked at, I was impressed by this hack's attention to detail, so I felt a similar level would be in order when making comments.

[anht1706@hotmai]

I want to change the word " found this post helpful", which file should I edit? Thanks

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by anht1706@hotmai

I want to change the word " found this post helpful", which file should I edit? Thanks

Search your phrase manager and translate the bit.

[kingMOB]

Hi Ted, is there a way to move the "See the top rated post in this thread" to the thread tools bar? And print in the thread list, just beside a thread tittle, the number of ratings that was given to it?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by kingMOB

Hi Ted, is there a way to move the "See the top rated post in this thread" to the thread tools bar? And print in the thread list, just beside a thread tittle, the number of ratings that was given to it?

You would have to change the hook location in the xml file at this time but it would be fairly simple to do.

[The Rocketeer]

Hi, could you help me adding some space between this and the forum postbit border please?

currently its touching it.



edit: would also be nice if you introduced some new and more professional looking thumbs icons