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.

[SurfTalk]

Originally Posted by Ted S

No one else has reported this error so I'm wondering if you have some sort of conflict. Are you running this on 4.01/ 4.02 or do you have an older version?

Hi Ted thanks for your reply.....I originally installed the mod on 4.01. Today I upgraded to 4.02, still have the same problem with helpful answers. Do you have any ideas where I should be looking for potential conflicts in the way I may have set up my forums? Is there anymore info I can give you that might make this less of a needle in a haystack? Your effort is much appreciated!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by SurfTalk

Hi Ted thanks for your reply.....I originally installed the mod on 4.01. Today I upgraded to 4.02, still have the same problem with helpful answers. Do you have any ideas where I should be looking for potential conflicts in the way I may have set up my forums? Is there anymore info I can give you that might make this less of a needle in a haystack? Your effort is much appreciated!

Interesting. Are you running any other large mods or is your board mostly "out of the box"? Was this a new 4.0 install or a 3.x upgrade?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by nibb

There isnt installation instruction. There is just a file to upload and an upload folder.

Which of the xml im support to upload? And what about the upload folder, should be it FTP it manually?

There is a file install.html along with the zip archive. You need to read it before installing as it explains all of the steps.

[SurfTalk]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Interesting. Are you running any other large mods or is your board mostly "out of the box"? Was this a new 4.0 install or a 3.x upgrade?

Hi Ted, the only other mod I'm running is Blackthorn last 30 pm's. Other than that it's the vb blog and vb cms. This was a new install (I came in to the party on 4.01). The only other things I've done other than altering control panel option settings are I've renamed the admin and mod folders, and I've password protected the renamed folders and also password protected the includes and install folders. I assume this has no effect on the mod? Obviously the files were uploaded to the appropriately renamed folder. The "simple" was this answer helpful yes/no works fine, it's only the 10 point system (the one I really want to use!) that has the problem.

[vivamexico55]

Feature suggestion if you're taking them:

When a post reaches a certain # of ratings, it changes background color (to a user defined color preferrably).

For instance, if 5 people vote +Yes to a user's post, it becomes a light platinum shade that makes it stand out from other posts.

Not sure if it's possible on vb4, but on the previous mod I was using in 3.8 (Post Ranking Stats) it was really helpful to skim quickly a thread and figure out the best posts.

Thanks! Willing to donate a few more bucks if you work this in! =)

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by vivamexico55

Feature suggestion if you're taking them:

When a post reaches a certain # of ratings, it changes background color (to a user defined color preferrably).

For instance, if 5 people vote +Yes to a user's post, it becomes a light platinum shade that makes it stand out from other posts.

Not sure if it's possible on vb4, but on the previous mod I was using in 3.8 (Post Ranking Stats) it was really helpful to skim quickly a thread and figure out the best posts.

Thanks! Willing to donate a few more bucks if you work this in! =)

This can be done now with a template conditional. I will post a few examples this weekend.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by SurfTalk

Hi Ted, the only other mod I'm running is Blackthorn last 30 pm's. Other than that it's the vb blog and vb cms. This was a new install (I came in to the party on 4.01). The only other things I've done other than altering control panel option settings are I've renamed the admin and mod folders, and I've password protected the renamed folders and also password protected the includes and install folders. I assume this has no effect on the mod? Obviously the files were uploaded to the appropriately renamed folder. The "simple" was this answer helpful yes/no works fine, it's only the 10 point system (the one I really want to use!) that has the problem.

very very strange.

I'm not able to duplicate your error but what's really wierd is that the function can_administer isn't used in this script. Is there any more detail in the error like the path or other files which may help me track this down?

[Pro-eSports.com]

Ted, in the settings for this mod there is only a bulk option for threads but not for entire forums. It would be a little hassle for me to change this setting in every forum. It would be cool if you could add a bulk tool for forums too.

Thanks.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Pro-eSports.com

Ted, in the settings for this mod there is only a bulk option for threads but not for entire forums. It would be a little hassle for me to change this setting in every forum. It would be cool if you could add a bulk tool for forums too.

Thanks.

The bulk feature is for forums. No sense in bulk enabling threads which change every day...

[Pro-eSports.com]

Originally Posted by Ted S

The bulk feature is for forums. No sense in bulk enabling threads which change every day...

It says "Threads" in the settings that's why I was confused. Gonna try it out now.
Thanks for the help.