Using GD Star Rating with cache plugins
GD Star Rating supports dynamic loading of ratings using AJAX calls from early 1.6.x versions, and from 1.7.0 this support is completed. With this you can use plugin on websites running some cache system or cache plugins like WP Super Cache.
Displaying rating results
Widgets are not the only way to display list with rating/review results. You can add results into post (using shortcode) or anywhere in the theme you want (using function). This is first post to go deeper into this type of rendering. More to come soon.
Shortcodes
All shortcodes plugin supports are very complicated, and have a lot of settings. It’s not a good idea for anyone to actually remember all that or even need to go through list of all those settings. But as it turns out you don’t need to remember all that.
Add ratings to RSS feed
Even before 1.0.0 version of the plugin was released I have added a feature allowing integration of rating results into RSS feed. But for a long time this only worked with standard rating results. Now, with release of 1.5.6 this is finally expanded.
How to: Set voting rules
GD Star Rating allows you to set rules for voting that can be global, per category and per post. This way you can set very precise rules through out the blog and control the voting process. This post will explain how voting rules work and how to use it.
How to reorder posts
Now that finally GD Star Rating from 1.5.0 supports reordering posts on any page using ratings and reviews data, from both standard and multis ratings, it’s time to explain for less experienced users how to do it. And as it turns out, it’s very simple.
Categories management
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.
Optimization Guide #2
After you have set JavaScript and CSS settings according to my recommendations from the first optimization post, now is the time to look at some other settings. So, here are AJAX, cache, static image generation and few other settings.
Optimization Guide #1
I know, GD Star Rating has a lot (or maybe too many) settings. But that’s what it takes to make a plugin that can be customized to the extent this plugins does. But, all that will require some tweaking and optimizations for better performance.
Comments integration #2
After the rating is saved along with the comment into database, now it’s time to show that rating with the comment on the post page. This will also require modifying the theme files. And again, there is a couple of functions you will need to use.
