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.

[Alan_SP]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Please keep in mind that vbulletin has a maximum number of forums that you can have, after which you will encounter performance issues. Forums are not fit to be used as a large number of review categories.

Well, he speaks about thousands of products, they could go in numerous categories, but it hardly would exceed few dozens of them, asking for not too many forums. Forum is category, and each category could have thousands of products.

[bigtree]

FYI

This works fine on 4.1.7 . Looking forward to the official release.

Cheers!

[downloadsuk]

I've had another idea for a potential feature - could we have a field for 'tags', which are then used as tags for that particular 'thread'/review/product?

Also, any idea how I can remove/replace the dollar sign in the product listings page?


Thanks.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Hi Ted,

We've spent a week or so now playing around with this mod - customising it etc. It really is great - however, since we are looking to potentially add thousands of products, our concern is bulk management - for example, products get updated, specs / prices change.

What is the potential for being able to 'update' products with a bulk XML file - for example, the first column we include the unique product ID, and then the subsequent columns of information will update that specific product.

Obviously in order to do this, we would need to be able to export the current list of products as well...

Thanks,

The latest release brings in internal categories, review browsing and even XML importing so you should be just fine with hundreds, even thousands of products.

We'll be extending the importer a bit in the next version to allow scheduled updates.

If you're looking at millions things change a bunch and I can walk you through that directly.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

I've had another idea for a potential feature - could we have a field for 'tags', which are then used as tags for that particular 'thread'/review/product?

Very possible... How would you use them? Who would create them?

Also, any idea how I can remove/replace the dollar sign in the product listings page?

Edit the template and / or phrase as you see fit.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by psychobike

Please tell me this is not some bad news!
Btw, I searched rather quickly through the pages on this mod a saw something similar to what I posted around thread #60(something?). Anyway, to get this error message I was trying to leave a review on a the one and only product I have added so far. I tried reducing the amount of text I had in the Product Comments section, with no luck. I tried changing the name in Review Headline, and switching from 5 stars to a 3 star selection, again all with no luck. The error message below kept appearing after each attempt.
I'm running a 4.1.7 version board and Products Review Forums v1.1.2beta file.

vBulletin Message
Oh great, you had to go and press THAT button. There goes the whole site. Just kidding... We had an issue posting your review, please try again or contact support and use code 164250-B

This error means that after creating the post an internal ID is not being returned which opens the door to data issues... thus the error to stop from going further.

Double check all of your vBulletin install files are updated to the most recent version.

[paradox1666]

When I write a review and submit it, I got this message in post: This is an empty post



Please fast help me

[downloadsuk]

Thanks Ted - is there any chance we can get the product name in the URL for the list of reviews? Currently it is; /productforums.php?do=matches&productid=25

It would be good to have it as /productforums.php?do=matches&productid=25&name=Xbo x-360

This way we can use vBSEO to make the URL look a lot nicer, i.e. /reviews/Xbox-360/25/

[downloadsuk]

Originally Posted by paradox1666

When I write a review and submit it, I got this message in post: This is an empty post



Please fast help me

Try reading the instructions in the original post;

"You must enable the modification in each forum you wish to designate for products and you must create products in order for the mod to show up. "

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Thanks Ted - is there any chance we can get the product name in the URL for the list of reviews? Currently it is; /productforums.php?do=matches&productid=25

It would be good to have it as /productforums.php?do=matches&productid=25&name=Xbo x-360

This way we can use vBSEO to make the URL look a lot nicer, i.e. /reviews/Xbox-360/25/

If you want to customize your url structure it would take a bit of work to find each link but should not be difficult to add a title too and then remap with htaccess as you see fit.