Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Post Rating System (plus many sub-features)

Note: While this modification is updated for compatibility, I am only developing features for the 4.x version. I understand many sites continue to use 3.8 for a variety of reasons but dual developing takes time away from adding anything new. I encourage you to develop out your own change and share them back as no modification is ideal for every forum out of the box.

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 (AJAX) to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the benefits of each post.

Designed for maximum flexibility:


This addon is built to be flexible and offers several customization options including:

• The ability to show a user's vote stats in posts
• The ability to use image or text ratings.
• The ability to offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• The ability to turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• The ability to decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• The ability to audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• The ability to ban specific members from using the system.
• The ability to customize the AJAX message shown after a post is rated.
• The ability to edit all text and messages through phrases.
• The ability to show a page with the top helpful posts.
• The ability to show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Integration with the reputation system for ratings.
• Template driven display that can easily be customized to 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.

Load & Scale:
This addon is designed to work with small to large sites and is currently being used by sites with more than 2 million posts. If you have questions about integrating with your big board please contact me.

Modification Installation:
This addon requires uploading multiple files, installing a vBulletin product and enabling the feature in any forums you wish. No template modifications are required. Please see the included install file for detailed instructions.

If you are not seeing the rating bar double check that you have enabled the feature in the forum you are in and insure the Manual Template override option is not enabled.

Rating Review & Deletion:
To identify and remove abuse a reporting system is included with this addon and can be found in your vBulletin ACP under the Helpful Answers tab. Through this panel you will be able to view a user's overall rating history and individual ratings and can remove either if necessary. Users can also be explicitly banned from the system.

Reputation System Integration:
Helpful Answers can be extended to directly tie into your reputation system giving users positive or negative points based on the ratings of their posts. There are numerous options on how to handle ratings that can be found in a separate Helpful Answers Reputation part of your vBulletin Settings page.

External Integration:
vB Plaza Modification - http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359
vB Experience - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199556

Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):
vBulletin forums reach millions of consumers around the world yet little is known about their habits and opinions. This addon was released to the public out of requests but also to further the research of forum user's behaviors and actions through collecting the most basic data on thousands of sites.

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.

While you may disable this feature through the administrative options I ask that you consider leaving it in place to help this research effort and insure the continued support of the addon.

The tracking feature uses the php library cURL on a 5 second timeout. If cURL is not installed this option is automatically disabled.

Updates:
- 5/13/2011 - Release of 2.0.6 minor bug fix
- 08/31/2009 - Release of 2.0.0
- 08/07/2009 - Release of 1.9.5 stable

Other Versions:
This addon will work with 3.7 but to avoid issues with different code versions please see the 3.7 version thread here.

Before you download this modification please remember this is a free tool provided as a courtesy to you and support responses are subject to the availability of the author and other members. If you are looking for a professionally supported system this is not the solution for you.

[Wonksta]

When I installed 1.8.4 it does not add the vote options in posts even though the manual insert code is disabled!

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Odd. Let's try again...

hrm, that didn't do it either

[Saviour]

I use the Articles Forum mod and would like to know if there's any way to set your mod to just show the rating in the first thread...and not the subsequent posts.

What do I need to edit in order to accomplish this...or is there a setting in the mod, itself?

Update...

Nevermind...found out I have to edit one of the Article Forum templates in order to accomplish this.

[tpearl5]

Originally Posted by Ted S

Odd. Let's try again...

This is the condition you'll want for helpful_answers_mosthelp_post
<if condition="!$GLOBALS['FIRSTPOSTID'] AND $helpfulanswer[postid] != $GLOBALS['qrfirstpostid']">

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by willy888

I installed it 1.8.4 but can't vote in posts !!!!! Nothing apears
I only see in admim cp Helpful Answers settings & Helpful Answers Reputation Settings

Step 3) Enable the system in any of your forums by visiting the forum options and scrolling to the end of the page.

There are not

Alternatively you can update multiple forums through the Bulk Forum Enabler located in the Helpful Answers Tab.(Required)

what is this?

It sounds like you didn't follow the directions properly and have not enabled the addon in any forums. By default it is turned off in all forums.

To enable it there are two options. First you may go to the forum options page for each forum and turn it on.

Secondly you may use a tool included with this addon to enable it in multiple forums. The tool can be found in the helpful answers section of your Admin CP.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

This is the condition you'll want for helpful_answers_mosthelp_post
<if condition="!$GLOBALS['FIRSTPOSTID'] AND $helpfulanswer[postid] != $GLOBALS['qrfirstpostid']">

Awesome! I'll get that updated for 1.9.1 beta 290239

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by SighK

When I installed 1.8.4 it does not add the vote options in posts even though the manual insert code is disabled!

Have you enabled the modification in the forum you are viewing threads in?

[The Smoking Gun]

Sorry to take the easy way out but there are 500 some odd posts in this thread for me to look for what I have to ask.
~Thank you for understanding~

It states there are three utility scripts attached to this post...
ha_import.php
ha_old.php
ha_revote.php

Which I believe are VERY useful tools for this mod, however before installing it I would like to have the most (for me being a 3.8 for my first version used) applicable tool, which seems to be missing from the attachments list of files as listed here.

Attached Files
File Type: php ha_old.php (2.7 KB, 16 views)
File Type: php ha_revote.php (2.8 KB, 17 views)

Where would one find the 'ha_import.php' attachment which seems to be missing?

Thanks for sharing such a great add-on that is sure to make things much easier to find for many newer users who often get overwhelmed by what they would need to read through to get close to the answer they are looking for! (wonders why this isn't being utilized here LOL)

Thanks for enlightening me to what I may just be overlooking, or isn't obvious to someone new here!

TSG!

Originally Posted by Ted S

Tips & Tricks Using Template Variables:

While the Helpful Answers section may appear to only add to a small part of your post it can be used much more extensively to change the color of an entire post, to add a special icon or just about anything else you like. Here are list of the variables available for your postbit and postbit_legacy templates.

$post[totalrank] - The total number of ratings
$post[goodrank] - The number of good ratings
$post[badrank] - The number of bad ratings
$post[helpfulgood] - True if the post is positive overall (more good than bad ratings)
$show[rate_helpfulanswer] - True if the user can rate the post (false if they are banned or have rated it).
$post[helpfulanswerid] - True if the user has already rated the post.

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

Additional variables can also be found in the user's profile page (if enabled).

$helpfulposts[totalranks] - The total ratings of a member's ppsts
$helpfulposts[goodranks] - The total good ratings of a member's posts
$helpfulposts[badranks] - The total bad ratings of a member's posts

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

Identify the top rated post.

Step 1 - Enable the top rated post feature from your Helpful Answers Settings.
Step 2 - Add the code:

<if condition="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid] AND THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread'">This is the top rated post!</code>

To your postbit or postbig_legacy template

This can be changed around to add colors, an icon or anything else you want.

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

Digg Like Ratings (Format: +6 Yes | No)
Step 1 - Open the template helpful_answers
Step 2 -
Replace the code

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 <phrase 1="$post[goodrank]" 2="$post[totalrank]">$vbphrase[helpfulanswer_x_out_of_y]</phrase>
</if>

With the new code:

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 + $post[goodrank]
</if>

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

(Thumb Up)...5 (Thumb Down)...2
Step 1 - Open the template helpful_answers
Step 2 -
Replace the code

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 <phrase 1="$post[goodrank]" 2="$post[totalrank]">$vbphrase[helpfulanswer_x_out_of_y]</phrase>
</if>

With the new code:

<if condition="$post['totalrank']">
 <img src="images/buttons/ha_thumbsup.gif" width="11" height="20" border="0" alt="Good" /> $post[goodrank] 
 <img src="images/buttons/ha_thumbsdn.gif" width="11" height="20" border="0" alt="Bad" /> $post[badrank] 
</if>

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

Highlighting the top rated post:

Step 1 - Set "Get Top Post per Thread" to on in your Helpful Answers settings.
Step 2 - Open your postbit or postbit_legacy template (whichever your forum uses)
Step 3 - Find all instances of class="alt1" and class="alt2"
Step 4 - At each instance add the following code directly after style="

<if condition="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid]">background-color:#CCCCCC;</if>

#CCCCCC is the color to highlight the post with. You may change this to another HTML Color Code

Step 5 - Repeat this for each instance (there may be as many as 5 depending on the template)
For example:

<td class="alt1" align="$stylevar[right]" style="<if condition="$thread[toppost] == $post[postid]">background-color:#CCCCCC;</if>border: $stylevar[cellspacing]px solid $stylevar[tborder_bgcolor]; border-$stylevar[left]: 0px; border-top: 0px">

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

Utility Scripts

Three utility scripts are attached to this post which you may need to use if you are modifying the addon or doing a special import. Each of these should be run from your admincp folder and deleted after use.

1. ha_import.php - This file will import thank yous out of the Thank You Post hack and import them as helpful votes.
2 . ha_old.php - This file will resync vote summaries for version 1.5 and below.
3. ha_revote.php - This file will resync vote summaries for versions 1.6 and above

[Ted S]

That's a wonderfully observant question!

ha_import.php is missing as it contained a nasty bug and needs to be redone. In the mean time you can use the modification, you just can't import those votes but I will have it back up soon!

[The Smoking Gun]

Thank you for your expedient reply Ted, being a bit new to this I have to ask... which votes won't I be able to import until this is re-done?
And I assume anything that has previously transpired will then still be able to be imported with out corrupting the existing stats?

And is there an ETC (estimated time of completion) ?
I am not trying to rush you, only make informed plans for my forums.

Thanks again,
TSG!