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.

[downloadsuk]

Originally Posted by Ted S

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.

Hi Ted - I must admit, I am struggling with this. I can find the links, but I am not sure which variable I need to add in order for the product name to be added to the URL - using {vb:raw title} for example causes the URL to have a number of spaces in it - which is obviously messy.

I would quite like to do this for the Categories as well, so it would look like mypage.com/category/computers - rather than mypage.com/productforums.php?catid=1

Any help would be much appreciated on this.

Will you be adding the option for custom fields? It's the main thing holding me back from adding hundreds/thousands of products with the bulk upload.

Also, speaking of the bulk upload - do you have any data mapping services you would recommend? It's taking me quite a long time to organise the data in Excel and then format it to the required XML format. I know you mentioned before that CSV upload wasn't an option - but this would be a million times easier.

Finally, I know we spoke before about mass editing - I'm concerned that with all the data being uploaded, it is likely to change on a regular basis - could an option be created whereby if a product is added with a matching SKU to a previous product, then it overwrites the previous fields?

Many thanks for your Mod again.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Hi Ted - I must admit, I am struggling with this. I can find the links, but I am not sure which variable I need to add in order for the product name to be added to the URL - using {vb:raw title} for example causes the URL to have a number of spaces in it - which is obviously messy.

The script doesn't do this, you'd have to either build it yourself or make a manual mapping through htaccess to trick things.

For example, you can edit the plugin to output a second variable, {vb:raw urltitle} which runs through the php function urlencode() first or which has spaces and special characters removed / converted.

$product['urltitle'] = str_replace(" ", "-", $product['title']); // spaces become dashes
$product['urltitle'] = preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9\_\- ]/", '', $product['urltitle']); // removes anything but letters, numbers, dashes and underlines

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Will you be adding the option for custom fields? It's the main thing holding me back from adding hundreds/thousands of products with the bulk upload.

Assuming the mod keeps picking up use, yes, we will be.

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Also, speaking of the bulk upload - do you have any data mapping services you would recommend? It's taking me quite a long time to organise the data in Excel and then format it to the required XML format. I know you mentioned before that CSV upload wasn't an option - but this would be a million times easier.

CSV is a pain to parse as you're counting by the number of comma separated items, not the element names. That means you still have to build the structure, but if you mess up with a single column or special character, the row is skipped or, as is so often the case, gets brought in incorrectly.

I'm sure there's a tool that can convert out from CSV and over to XML easily.

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Finally, I know we spoke before about mass editing - I'm concerned that with all the data being uploaded, it is likely to change on a regular basis - could an option be created whereby if a product is added with a matching SKU to a previous product, then it overwrites the previous fields?

Right now the XML importer throws away duplicates but we can certainly have it update records instead keying off of a UPC / SKU / title match.

[bigtree]

If it had an editor, used the vbulletin editor I'd be all over this.

As far as how it is right now, Its simple and to the point. I like that. When do you think you will add the editor Ted? I'm hanging on a thread here waiting to start using this.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by bigtree

As far as how it is right now, Its simple and to the point. I like that. When do you think you will add the editor Ted? I'm hanging on a thread here waiting to start using this.

We haven't scoped the next feature release yet to know how much work is involved but given how busy commerce is this time of year, it will likely be a few weeks.

[tele955848]

Zeigt mir keine Fotos oder den Verkaufstext an??

This is an empty post

[downloadsuk]

Originally Posted by Ted S

The script doesn't do this, you'd have to either build it yourself or make a manual mapping through htaccess to trick things.

For example, you can edit the plugin to output a second variable, {vb:raw urltitle} which runs through the php function urlencode() first or which has spaces and special characters removed / converted.

$product['urltitle'] = str_replace(" ", "-", $product['title']); // spaces become dashes
$product['urltitle'] = preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9\_\- ]/", '', $product['urltitle']); // removes anything but letters, numbers, dashes and underlines

Thanks Ted - will give it a shot.

On another note, is there any possibility of expanding the search options to search for all relevant keywords in the description as well? For example, at the moment a user can search by title, but say they were looking for reviews of a particular product type, say Black Television, or Smart phone - and these words aren't included in the title, then they don't appear in the search or filter results - it's not the best user experience.

Additionally, allowing a user to sort reviews by say price, or popularity (views) or # of reviews, or even newest first would also be helpful.

Thanks.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by tele955848

Zeigt mir keine Fotos oder den Verkaufstext an??

Support is offered in english and english only.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by downloadsuk

Thanks Ted - will give it a shot.

On another note, is there any possibility of expanding the search options to search for all relevant keywords in the description as well? For example, at the moment a user can search by title, but say they were looking for reviews of a particular product type, say Black Television, or Smart phone - and these words aren't included in the title, then they don't appear in the search or filter results - it's not the best user experience.

Additionally, allowing a user to sort reviews by say price, or popularity (views) or # of reviews, or even newest first would also be helpful.

Thanks.

Certainly possible however we'll likely need to move the mod over to a FULLTEXT index to allow for a more sophisticated matching process rather than looking up individual words. We've come up with a weighting system that makes this work better than many are use to with similar searches but it does slow down the speed of the addon and is certainly not a perfect search solution

[qpurser]

I just saw your mod and installed it. Something I have been looking for a long time and thank you for putting this together.

I just have a few questions:

• Your mod doesn't create a link to the "productforums.php" page. Correct?
• We have a closed membership forum and "adding an new product" doesn't really need a "approval" from the mods. Can this be turned off?
• I might have understand the instructions wrong but I created a dedicated forum for the "product reviews" and added the id from this forum in the Cpanel. This doesn't mean if somebody posts a new thread in this forum it will be added automatically to your mod. Correct? but users have to go via the link in the "productforums.php" page?

Thanks for any help

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by qpurser

• Your mod doesn't create a link to the "productforums.php" page.

Correct. Every site is different so we leave it up to you to decide where you want it to be linked too.

Originally Posted by qpurser

• We have a closed membership forum and "adding an new product" doesn't really need a "approval" from the mods. Can this be turned off?

You're the first to ask so it's not a feature option. Making the change however would be simple... If you want the raw code edits let me know.

Originally Posted by qpurser

• I might have understand the instructions wrong but I created a dedicated forum for the "product reviews" and added the id from this forum in the Cpanel. This doesn't mean if somebody posts a new thread in this forum it will be added automatically to your mod. Correct? but users have to go via the link in the "productforums.php" page?

When you designate a forum as a product-forum area, threads can be created with product data but do not have to be created this way. The new thread button will still trigger normal posting [if enabled at all] while a link to productforums.php start the new product.


Most installs turn off posting in that forum and use the link in productforums.php to startup products since this is not a common task. Reviews are started from within a product thread.