One of the new things in GD Star Rating 1.4.6 is functions Categories panel for categories based management of rules, restrictions and integration. Categories hierarchy is fully supported, and settings can be inherited from parent categories. This panel looks much like the Articles panel, but less crowded. Categories are displayed according to hierarchy. Bellow the grid you can see the bunch of selection boxes that can be used to set things for selected categories.
Categories Panel
As you can see, categories are displayed using the hierarchy, and for each category you have info on moderation, restrictions, rules, integration and number of posts. Bellow the grid you can see the selection boxes that can be use to changes settings for selected categories. This is pretty much the same as for the articles panel. If you click on the category name, you will be transfered to articles panel, and data will be filtered by the selected category.
But the main difference is additional values for each setting. And that is inherit from parent. One category can inherit settings from it’s parent category. If the top level category is set to parent value, it will use global settings. All posts in the category will be affected by category settings if the post specific settings are to use category specifics.
But main new thing is Integration column. Right now this will be to set multi rating set that will be used for the integrating multi ratings in the comment form and comments area. Using this panel you can have different sets used in the posts belonging to different categories. But explaining all that will take some time and space, and new post with all that will be published in the next 2-3 days.
I know that such detailed control over settings is a good thing, but it comes with the price. If your blog has a complicated structure with many nested categories, and on top of that you have posts that belong to many categories at once, and these categories use different rules, plugin can have though time to sort out what settings to use. So, be careful with setting all that. Here is one negative example, and how the plugin will solve it:
You have a post that belongs to category A, B and C, and category A is parent to C. If multi set for B is set to 2, set for A set to 4, and set for C set to 3 you have a real problem on what set to use. Plugin will sort data by category and category with higher ID will have priority. So in this case that would be C. If now C inherits from A, than plugin will use value from category B. Anyway, don’t complicate things with this settings, simple settings will be resolved quickly and understanding what’s going on will be straightforward.
GD Star Ratings 1.4.6 right now uses only multi set values, and all restrictions will be used from GD Star Rating 1.5.0, beacuse that still requires some testing and optimizations. Few more settings will be added to this panel soon.
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June 25, 2009
at 4:05 AM
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This is great, Milan. I’ve recently downloaded the widget and am proudly displaying it on my blog (click on my name).
One question – only a handful of my posts have ratings which are ‘saved’ in the Multi-Set Results page of the plugin (I am using 1.4.6). Why is it not picking up the hundreds of other posts myself, and readers, have rated online??
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June 25, 2009
at 11:12 AM
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Well, this panel is still in works, I will check it out. And ratings are displayed ok on the blog pages, only this panel is not showing them all?
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June 25, 2009
at 9:09 PM
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Ratings show perfectly on the blog main page (and individual posts). The problem:
1) they are not registering on the panel; and because of that
2) the widget is only ranking a handful of my posts!
Thoughts?
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June 25, 2009
at 9:40 PM
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If you are using multi sets, you must select multi set for the widget, and only data gathered for that multi set will be displayed. There is no way, and there will be no way to combine ratings from different sets.
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June 25, 2009
at 11:27 PM
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Perhaps I’m not expressing myself clearly – sorry
I have specified the multi set in the widget itself. I have ~500 posts and a great number of them have been ranked. What shows in decreasing order on the widget on the home page are only a handful of them – where are the others? i.e., some have 5 or more votes/higher rankings, and they are no where to be found?
Confused.
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June 25, 2009
at 11:45 PM
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I was going through the code for this, and everything appears fine. But considering number of settings, maybe it isn’t. Can you please send me screenshor of the full widget settings from admin settings, so I can check it out. You can send it to my email: milan at gdragon dot info. Thanx.
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June 25, 2009
at 11:53 PM
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Sent!
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July 17, 2009
at 8:58 AM
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This is a huge plugin! Am all lost in the documentation. So before I start – Can GD Star Rating be applied to only ONE category instead of site wide?
I have a category called reviews. And would like the commenters to comment and give their review rating -> which then add up and show average rating for the post in that category only.
Sorry if this question has been asked before I’ve just been browsing through your documentation and site for about an hour and couldn’t find the answer.
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July 17, 2009
at 12:18 PM
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Yes, you can use it only one category. The way to do it is to use different rules and restrictions. I plan to publish a post on the subject in the next few days. One post on use of the categories is already published.
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