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.

[deverill2010]

Originally Posted by cooljeba

I get the same error message too.. It is because it is only trying to insert
<br> which is 4 char long.

I set the min post length to 0 then it only seems to be posting <br> as the review . Disabled it for now

The very last productforums/php that Ted uploaded is now working for me. Make a backup of your copy and upload it, see if it works.

Yeah I spotted that <br> thing once, but didn't post it as couldnt get it up again.

[deverill2010]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

Thanks ted I really appreciate all your help, it is looking great and deffo the best out the there by far!

With adding custom raiting fields, is there any way to make them required? As I need to do this.

I also just noticed that when adding custom rating fields, how do I go about getting the star images to show instead of text like so -

Content: 3 stars
Readability: 4 stars
Graphics / Illustrations: 4 stars
Would Recommend: 5 stars

What is the template for posting this as I would like to edit the way the way the reviews display within posts.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

I also just noticed that when adding custom rating fields, how do I go about getting the star images to show instead of text like so -

Content: 3 stars
Readability: 4 stars
Graphics / Illustrations: 4 stars
Would Recommend: 5 stars

What is the template for posting this as I would like to edit the way the way the reviews display within posts.

You'd have to hack the php code to insert the images rather than text... Sub-elements are built as a review is created so there's no database storing of the individual selections.

There are however phrases you can work off of which will help a bit.

[deverill2010]

Ah I wouldn't know what to do with the PHP code. Just thought it would look more aesthetically pleasing.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by deverill2010

Ah I wouldn't know what to do with the PHP code. Just thought it would look more aesthetically pleasing.

Gotcha...

If you can comp [photoshop, sketch, powerpoint] what you want I'll try to get it done in our upcoming bug release.

[deverill2010]

I will do thank you.

[GCC LLC]

Having lots of problems with search. On any search for manufacturer for example, the URL as shown in the browser is productforums.php?mrfg=xxxx but the results page says "No products matched your search. Try broadening your criteria or selecting another category."

There are definitely manufacturers in the database (and verified via phpMyAdmin) that have the exact string as chosen from the drop down menu.

Additionally, a text box search for product name (thread title) uses URL as productforums.php?title=yyyy which returns a list of every product in the database, regardless of it being in the thread/product title.

Ideas?

[GCC LLC]

OH and FYI, for a future release I noticed that you had the manufacturers drop down box limited to a maximum of 100 results. We have a large import and our manufacturer's drop down box stopped showing results at the letter N.. I dug through the code and removed the SQL LIMIT statement on that and now it works fine. Others may have a similar problem, so that's how I fixed it on our end.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

OH and FYI, for a future release I noticed that you had the manufacturers drop down box limited to a maximum of 100 results. We have a large import and our manufacturer's drop down box stopped showing results at the letter N.. I dug through the code and removed the SQL LIMIT statement on that and now it works fine. Others may have a similar problem, so that's how I fixed it on our end.

Lists of even 100 names are rather unmanageable for users and should really be changed to search input boxes...

That said I'll take a look at the search bug and see if we can fix it.

[GCC LLC]

Every store in our industry has well over 100 manufactureres so if your going to support a mass import of products then users are going to get a list of companies that stops in the middle because of the 100 set limit whether its manageable or not. I agree there has to more search options but you will still run into this error with bulk imports.