After months of development, GD Star Rating now features full rating and review support that will allows you to integrate ratings into comments, rating and review aggregation and various means to display both rating and review data, and more.
So, here is the overview of these features. This list contains only the most important major features. Full list is available with the info files bundled with the plugin:
- Post / Page standard and multi rating that allows direct rating within the post, or integration into comments
- Post / Page author review using standard or multi ratings
- Standard comments rating
- Comment author review using standard, single rating block
- Aggregation of comments rating and reviews into post or page
- Display various rating results into widgets or into post using functions or shortcodes
- Number of integration functions that allow different visual modifications
- Rating rules and time restrictions on the post/page basis
Recently I have checking out other review plugins available for the WordPress, and I was mostly interested in commercial, so called ‘premium’ solutions. I wanted to see what kind of features these plugins have, and to see if the price of these plugins are justified. And maybe it was, few months or year ago, but now, I really don’t see a point in paying a lot of money for a very limited plugins, when you can use my plugin. Also, most of the existing commercial plugins are not maintained regularly. I don’t know much about support for these plugins, because I am not going to pay to find out something like that. I would like to hear your opinions about these plugins, if you had a chance of using some of them. I am also willing to create import filters that will transfer data from other rating/review plugins into GD Star Rating, so if you can provide me with partial database with saved data I (and many of the other users for sure) will be grateful.
GD Star Rating now has almost 30.000 of PHP code, JavaScript, CSS and HTML markup. With very long list of features, different ways to customize plugin, integrate into themes and other plugins, this is one of the most complex WordPress plugins available. And my list of features that needs to be implemented is fairly long, so the plugin will grow even more in the next few months. Number of websites that uses GD Star Rating is growing, and I am seeing a lot of blogs recently that use it. As always, suggestions are welcome, so leave a comment.
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May 30, 2009
at 6:41 AM
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Thank you so much, this is a tremendous piece of work.
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May 31, 2009
at 12:37 AM
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Thanks so much for this plugin, Milan, your hard work is much appreciated. I bought Wp-review site by Dan Grossman and it’s a terrible plugin. It really only works with his themes, it does not integrate well into WP 2.7, and it has very limited options. I wish I could get my money back.
Your plugin blows away all the “premium” review plugins I can find. Thanks again!
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June 3, 2009
at 2:27 AM
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Yeah no kidding, I bought that POS too… and needless to say it is a waste of money. It is next to impossible to integrate, far from the glittering plugin he made it seem. I wouldn’t have blown $97 bucks if I had known this FREE plugin existed..
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June 3, 2009
at 2:39 AM
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Many people have contacted me about this $97 ‘premium’ plugin. And so far no one has said anything good about it. As I understend it it works only with provided theme.
There is one more very similar to WPReviewSite plugin called WPReviewEngine. It costs $80 for one website and $150 for unlimited websites. It has more features then WPReviewSite. But this plugins allows you to lie to the website visitors by generating fake comments. Unbelievable.
So, spread the word about the GD Star Rating.
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May 31, 2009
at 4:05 PM
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Most voted list
hi, congrats for this great plugin, im using it in my website, but i have a few problems with templates, but dont matter i´ll fix it, but i want to make a question,
HOW i can make A LIST with the MOST VOTED POST, ONLY POST, NO PAGES, i dont want to put it in the sidebar so I dont need / use the widget, i just want to put a list of the most voted post in a page, i just need the calling code, you know, i hope you can help thanks,
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May 31, 2009
at 4:08 PM
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Hey Admin,
i m sorry if this is not the right place to post this topic, but i have problem with the css generated by GD Star, as it is being generated automatically i cannot just compress it, is their any possible solution to compress it.
The size of css is growing wild, its 206757 bytes, which could be compressed to approx. 6000 bytes.
due to this large size, my website is not loading in an optimized way.
Plz suggest the possible solution to overcome this problem.
By the way Thanks for this ultimate plugin, it is awesome.
if possible plz reply to me on my mail attached with this comment.
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May 31, 2009
at 5:30 PM
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Is it so hard to read the release announcements? This plugin is constantly improving, and is very important to read the posts about releases.
http://www.gdstarrating.com/2009/05/19/gd-star-rating-133/
http://www.gdstarrating.com/2009/05/20/settings-explained-part-5/
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May 31, 2009
at 8:04 PM
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hi MillaN i was searching and found the shortcodes, but i dont understant too much of php and in english less xD, i want the shortcode for show the , ‘top voted posts / most popular posts’
thanks…
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May 31, 2009
at 10:54 PM
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There will be detailed tutorial during the week.
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June 1, 2009
at 12:27 AM
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thanks man! I will checking that! thanks a lot!
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June 2, 2009
at 12:09 AM
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The above website is still extremely under construction so I apologize for that, but I have started implementing in the review system (VERY excited for it!) I have gotten the multi rating system working (visitors vote when they comment), but for some reason when I use the standard rating, when you click one of the stars in the comment form, it doesn’t stick (try commenting to see what I mean). The multi-rating stars work great though!
I was also wondering if there was a way (particularly w/the multi-rating, but also with the standard), where the average vote can display when looking at each post listed on an archive page. Is this where a template would come into play?
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June 2, 2009
at 12:25 AM
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Standard rating integrated in comment look like a bug. I will check it out. New version will be released in the next 24hours.
There is number of functions you can use to get all kinds of ratings. Also, most types of rendering are using templates. You can check out few tutorials about that. Also, full list (map actually) of templates is included with the plugin info files where you can see the functions for theme integration.
1.4.1 will feature another very, very unique feature: Builder panel that can be used to generate functions based on settings.
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June 5, 2009
at 4:03 AM
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Milan has fixed the standard rating bug in 1.4.2.
I’ve tested it briefly and it works.
Milan, check the forum for a feature request I just typed up.
Hopefully you’ll have a chance to look at that when you have the chance!
Thanks for everything so far!
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June 3, 2009
at 6:56 PM
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is there a way to have the post rating set to automatically integrate into every post, but then at the same time filter out certain individual post or categories?
if so, is there an html code that can be inserted into each post to have the rating system not show up, or is there a settings page to filter out certain categories? Thank you!
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June 4, 2009
at 6:22 PM
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There will be categories managment soon.
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June 5, 2009
at 4:16 AM
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Hi Milan,
There was a point in time when I was considering the WPReviewEngine plugin. But GDSR has pretty much equalled that plugin in terms of features!
Things I would like to see in upcoming versions are:
-Restrict one comment review per user per post
-Sort comments by rating (ascending/descending if at all possible?)
-Thumbs up/down functionality for comment reviews (I believe this is on the roadmap, correct me if I’m wrong)
Did anyone say you’re awesome?! Thanks man!
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June 5, 2009
at 2:19 PM
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Take a bow. This is one hell of a plugin. Joomla or Drupal users etc…would normally have to pay for. Added to a bunch of social bookmarks. Thanks a lot for this.
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June 17, 2009
at 5:15 AM
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The plugin is amazing…
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June 17, 2009
at 4:22 PM
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I love this plugin. So many neat features and nice designs. Looks amazing. Used this for a long time without problems but now on my new site i get a php error with it
Im sure the mistake is done by myself but any help would be really appreciated!
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June 17, 2009
at 4:27 PM
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Updated and fixed. New version tonight.
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June 17, 2009
at 5:09 PM
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Great!!
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June 20, 2009
at 12:50 AM
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I guess the reason ‘most voted list’s comment wasn’t addressed was because it is answered in the docs somewhere?
I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out how to sort my posts in order of rating. My blog is purely about ratings, so date-based sorting is out.
I don’t need a sidebar widget, I just want to sort by post rating. Is this possible?
Thanks,
Erika
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June 20, 2009
at 11:56 AM
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This is going to be added soon. Sorting can be done even now, but you need to make changes to WP_Query object, but it’s not that simple.
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June 20, 2009
at 6:19 PM
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Thanks for letting me know. I switched back to wp-postrating for the time being, but I like all the other features of gd star rating better, so I’ll switch back after you add this sorting feature.
Have a great weekend,
Erika
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June 20, 2009
at 6:32 PM
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Well, I can confirm that this feature will be added in GD Star Rating 1.5.0, that will be released in the next two weeks (or even earlier).
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June 22, 2009
at 2:52 AM
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Fantastic news — thanks so much!
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June 22, 2009
at 2:00 PM
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Hi,
I’m trying to customize the widget for this to show the most popular posts but I don’t know which file it looks at to display it.
At the mo’ it shows a bullet point for each one and I want it to show an excerpt of the post.
That I think I can do, but without knowing where to change it I’m stuck.
Please help.
The site I’m customising is here: http://www.emzi.dreamhosters.com/wordpress_test/
Thanks.
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June 22, 2009
at 2:39 PM
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I don’t understand exactly what you are trying do and what files you want to change. Plugin doens’t require any changes to any files, so you need to explain better. At this point GD Star Rating widget can’t show excerpt, but I will add that soon.
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June 22, 2009
at 5:38 PM
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Ok, I’ll leave the excerpt for now.
But how do I get rid of the bullet points? Which file do I modify to get rid of the li tags so the bullet points aren’t there?
Thanks,
Emma
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June 22, 2009
at 6:24 PM
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Excerpt tag will be added in next version. As for the bullet, the problem is caused by your theme. You need to modify CSS.
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June 23, 2009
at 9:25 AM
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The theme isn’t putting the bullet points there – your code is.
All I want is to take the li tags out.
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June 23, 2009
at 11:06 AM
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Widget displays the list, so it’s natural to show data as list using UL/LI. But if you want to change the display you need to create your own T2 template for the widget (check T2 map for reference), and to instruct the widget to use your template instead of the default one. Templates are HTML/CSS with use of the custom %TAG% tags.
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June 24, 2009
at 11:07 AM
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Thanks for the help.
I’ve created a new template and set it as the default for “Widget Star Rating” but it hasn’t changed.
Am I updated the right thing?
Thanks.
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June 24, 2009
at 11:56 AM
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You need to set the new template in the widget. Top of the widget settings have template field, select one you created. Default templates page is for setting templates for integration functions.
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June 26, 2009
at 4:44 PM
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Thanks for the plugin but I’m having difficulty getting the comment ratings to total as an average within the post
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June 26, 2009
at 5:52 PM
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I will need more info. But if the issue is not a bug, I can’t help you.
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June 26, 2009
at 7:31 PM
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Great plugin but man is it finicky! I’ve had to deactivate it. It screws up my entire site. The tinymce editor goes missing, certain posts go missing. Weird stuff. Maybe it’s incompatible with WP 2.8?
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June 26, 2009
at 7:43 PM
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Plugin is 100% compatible with WP 2.8. But since WP 2.8 is acting a lot when PHP is set to low memory (32MB is not enough anymore), it can happen that some plugins fail. I use WP 2.8 on all my blog right now, and each of them has GDSR ative, and I have no problems, as well as many more people that use it.
If something is not working when plugin is active it doesn’t mean that it’s plugins fault, many other factors can be involved. If something fails, like TinyMCE grab me the errors returend and I will check if the GDSR is the problem.
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