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

===========================

Installation is not upload & go... individualized settings are required. Read the install file.

===========================
QUICK TIPS:
===========================

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.

[The Ottoman]

If I wanted to add a search by MFG instead of price, I understand that I will need to edit the productforums.php. I am just wondering if you could point me in the direction of what to edit.

Also, I'd like to have the mfg show up in the table that gets displayed.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Killhunter

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ghlight=resize

Thats easy enough?

If you want to add in a browser-side resize by all means go right ahead but IMO that's not a solution as you're not actually resizing the image, you're just forcing it to show up smaller. This means the height could be a mile tall on the image and the full file still has to be downloaded so if it's really large, the site's speed is impacted.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by The Ottoman

If I wanted to add a search by MFG instead of price, I understand that I will need to edit the productforums.php. I am just wondering if you could point me in the direction of what to edit.

Also, I'd like to have the mfg show up in the table that gets displayed.

All of this is in productforums.php

First you'll have to add the mfrg to the input variables accepted around line 63 replace:

$vbulletin->input->clean_array_gpc('r', array(
        'catid'             => TYPE_INT,
        'title'             => TYPE_STR,
        'productid'     => TYPE_UINT,
        'min_price'     => TYPE_INT,
        'max_price'     => TYPE_INT,
        'min_rating'     => TYPE_UINT,
        'max_rating'     => TYPE_UINT,
        'posted'             => TYPE_UINT,
        'mfrg'                 => TYPE_STR
    ));

Next we have to search the database using a LIKE so we get some degree of fuzzy matching around 99 add:

if($vbulletin->GPC['mfrg']){ $conditions .= " AND pfp.mfrg LIKE '%". mysql_real_escape_string($vbulletin->GPC['mfrg']) ."%'"; } // mfrg of product

And then we have to be sure the variable persists from page to page line 164 add:

$sortaddon .= ($vbulletin->GPC['mfrg']) ? 'mfrg=' . $vbulletin->GPC['mfrg'] . '&' : '';

You'll have to edit the template to add a new form field, name of mfrg

Of course it would be more ideal to generate a list of manufacturers and let people pick via dropdown. Next update can do that.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by The Ottoman

Holy crap!, that was easy.

You may however want to adjust your sample XML file to have another sample product in it instead od the single one. It took me a little bit to figure out why Excel was only mapping a single line. If you have two sample products, the XML mapping understands how to handle multiple lines then.

Awesome and will do!

[Killhunter]

Originally Posted by Ted S

If you want to add in a browser-side resize by all means go right ahead but IMO that's not a solution as you're not actually resizing the image, you're just forcing it to show up smaller. This means the height could be a mile tall on the image and the full file still has to be downloaded so if it's really large, the site's speed is impacted.

And you cant add this or say me how i could do that?

[The Ottoman]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Of course it would be more ideal to generate a list of manufacturers and let people pick via dropdown. Next update can do that.

Well if that's comning soon, I can easily wait for that.

Thanks!!

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Killhunter

And you cant add this or say me how i could do that?

As I said before, adding an entire image uploading, file management, resizing and display class is not simple when it has to work on a infinite number of site configurations all of whom want their own specific file saving and display options -- which is why the mod uses urls right now.

If you want to add your own forced resize open up the review template and add a width="X" height="Y" into the <img> tag where you define either a max width or height... However that will not actually resize the image, it just forces it to look smaller while still downloading the entire file and potentially altering the aspect ratio or distorting the page.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by bigtree

Can't we use the vbulletin editor for this? That would make the most sense.

Use the editor for what?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by cowcowcow

Eagerly anticipating the next version

Anything in particular you hope to see in the update?

[Ted S]

Is there a feature or tweak you'd like to see make it into this mod? We'll be doing a feature release this week / weekend and while it won't include everything, chime in and we'll try to sneak it in.

Here's what's planned:

Planned Changes [Week of 1/16]
- Profile link to a search of a user's top posts [admin option]
- Post level link to the number of votes, good votes, or ratio for a user's posts [admin option]
- WYSIWYG editor for writing a review
- Search by manufacturer [dropdown]
- Cleaned up search page & results page
- Bug fixes here and there