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.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Volvoholic

Productforums.php does not load when I click on the forum enabled for reviews. I have made the changes to forumdisplay.php shown in the install file.

productforums.php isn't used in that process. The hack changes forumdisplay.php so that when you view the forum through an existing link, the format is adjusted to show review data via the template prodforums_threadbit.

Originally Posted by Volvoholic

I cant delete product categories. I get "Review ID not specified" when clicking on yes during the confirmation stage.

We'll add this to the next bug release.

[Killhunter]

Originally Posted by Ted S

If you have 4.0, you have "Free updates for this version" but I digress...

The mod is already build to parse data from 4.0.x as well as 4.1.x, it just doesn't display the editor. I can't justify development hours to support a very dated version of the software but you can switch to a editor-less format by hacking the template --

Edit template prodforums_review_create

1 - Remove the javascript function from the <form> tag

2 - Remove {vb:raw messagearea}

3 - Remove <script type="text/javascript" src="clientscript/vbulletin_ajax_suggest.js?v={vb:raw vboptions.simpleversion}"></script>

4 - Add the following code and format to fit your style / width needs

<div class="blockrow">
                                <label for="comments">Review</label>
                                <textarea class="primary textbox" id="comments" name="comments">{vb:raw comments}</textarea>
                            </div>

Im @ 4.0.3

Where is the javascript code i have to remove?

<form class="vbform block" action="productforums.php" method="post" onsubmit="return vB_Editor['{vb:raw editorid}'].prepare_submit(this.headline.value, {vb:raw vboptions.postminchars})">

Thank you very much Will I have to do that again if I update the addon?

[Killhunter]

my reviews are still displayed in the same forum, in which the products are..

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Killhunter

Im @ 4.0.3

Where is the javascript code i have to remove?

Thank you very much Will I have to do that again if I update the addon?

Edit template prodforums_review_create

If the template is updated in a future version your custom edits will override it.

[Ted S]

My apologies for the back to back releases but a few minor bugs have been discovered that seemed worth fixing. There are no security, data or critical bugs.

- fixes bug with admin not showing multiple page of reviews to edit / approve
- fixes bug with admin not allowing categories to be deleted
- fixes bug in prodforums_product_css with alignment of posts for some skins
- removes $ before manufacturer item descriptor

If you are upgrading from 1.2.1 simply install the new plugin file and upload admincp/productforums.php.

If you are upgrading from before 1.2.x update all files.

This upgrade will alter template prodforums_product_css if you have customized you can merge the template or simply add a </div> before the </li> tag.

[Ricsca]

Missing 2 key things:

- You can not upload image;
- You can not set a standard height for images;

How important is it that these two failures?

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by Ricsca

Missing 2 key things:

- You can not upload image;
- You can not set a standard height for images;

How important is it that these two failures?

Ouch. Thanks for the feedback but calling parts of a free mod a failure is probably not the best way to win the [positive] attention of the author.

Image urls were used because we don't see most people creating products individually, it's simply not scalable to hand enter even just a hundred products. When you enter a url, you define the image and thus you define the height... browser forced resizing is not a solution. Still there's been enough demand for uploading so while I think it will take people down the wrong path, we added to the feature roadmap a few weeks back.

[bigtree]

Originally Posted by The Ottoman

Actually, as someone who's just imported about 500 products into his install, allow me to give you some of my lessons learned:

Through some pretty easy scripting in Excel (predefining the URL to point to the product), joining some fields together and some unique items specific to my install; I was able to import all of the items in about an hours worth of research work and about a minute of actual processing work.

Doing this manually, it was taking me anywhere between 60-90 seconds per item, and that was with a copy/paste of HTML formatted data. So I saved myself atleast a half hour of data entry (and my sanity), and I've got it set up where I can throw in thousands of products in the future in quite literally under 5 minutes.

Now, that's just me - and I was not happy to look at an XML import versus a csv import which I was comfortable with. I'm sold on this method now.

I think what your issue stems from is that you have WYSIWYG data and you don't know how to capture that data with it's HTML sourcing data intact. If we could figure that out, would you try the XML import?

Hey, nicely explained. DEFIANTLY! The manufacturers do not provide RSS feeds for the information I need. I have to copy/paste it all. If I could enter in urls and the scripts would import everything I needed, including the images, that would be ideal. Is this possible? Please help if you can. I would appreciate this very much.

If I could see an example of what I need to write? I'm a copy past kind of guy.

[TheSupportForum]

when creating the product after viewing the post of the product it shows

This is an empty post

as the content

why does it not show the full description ?

[The Ottoman]

Originally Posted by bigtree

Hey, nicely explained. DEFIANTLY! The manufacturers do not provide RSS feeds for the information I need. I have to copy/paste it all. If I could enter in urls and the scripts would import everything I needed, including the images, that would be ideal. Is this possible? Please help if you can. I would appreciate this very much.

If I could see an example of what I need to write? I'm a copy past kind of guy.

Take a look at post 457.