WPReviewEngine - Extremely Powerful Affiliate Review Site Plugin for WordPress

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OK setting up my first site with it now.

So far it looks really promising and easy to use. One question before I go full on review on that ass.... Is the footer link required??

I know for me having to have the footer link is an instant deal breaker for me and will be for a lot of people. Especially in this industry.

1) Having to have a link on top of the fact that I already paid for the software would be a nosale on principle alone.

2) Most importantly, if you force people to keep that link it'll mean all people have to do is google "Powered by WordPress and WPReviewEngine" and they'll have more landing pages to steal than they can handle.

I'll be back with a full review.
 


Setting this baby up now.

Louis has been excellent in terms of support so far. Initial impressions are...Wow.

Awesome plugin with a sweet sweet theme.

Dave
 
I have not used this Plugin (Louis offered me a free test, but i just don't have time to mess with it for now), but he has coded a bunch of other sites for me and he did a REALLY great job with some slightly more advanced PHP and JS stuff (sites were not just slicing and CSS).
 
Not sure if you're still giving review copies, but i just finished setting up wpreviewsite plugin for one of my sites and althought it was ok, I didnt find it that great ( had a few problems ) so am curious to see what yours offer...

Thanks
 
My Review

Overall:
It's pretty cool and will save you some time and energy but not suited for WP novices if you want to do anything other than get it running with the cookie-cutter theme it comes with. I ran into a few coding problems while Louis was out and had to figure it out myself. So in other words, if you're a WP newb don't expect to just install this and have all your problems solved. But..... If you know your way around WP this will help you quite a bit!

Likes
Easy install
Easy configuration setup
The design/how he lays out the reviews on the page are what drew me to it.
Saves time!

Dislikes
- The layout itself. I don't know what theme you guys are looking at that's causing you to get a woody but to me the default theme is mediocre at best.

- You have to use a certain size image for each review image else it breaks the layout in IE6.

- You MUST post a comment on each individual review post after you post the review else 2 bad things happen.

1) You won't have any star ratings. You can't set default ratings as admin so the only way to get them is to post a comment on the blog post itself after it's been posted. It gives you an option to give it ratings there.

2) If you post a review with no ratings (which you literally have to initially) it throws PHP/MySQL errors on the homepage because it's looking for star ratings that don't exist.

- Custom rating categories don't show up when you pst them on an individual post. You have to use the Mass Add feature.

Summary
I spend on average at least 2 hours tweaking HTML code when I launch new review blogs and trying to get everything to look just right. This beats monkeying around in the code by a LONG shot so I will definitely continue to use this and look forward to h is updated releases.
 
Thanks for the review. I'm going through and fixing the bugs you listed now.

I'll have an update out as soon as I get them all sorted.

- Custom rating categories don't show up when you pst them on an individual post. You have to use the Mass Add feature.
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Could you elaborate on this? They've work fine for everyone else. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean.
 
WPReview Review

While I am sure Louis will make improvements in this area, straight out of the box, this plugin is not for newbies, yet. However, most problems are really probably communication problems. Several areas of the Documentation are vague. It needs to be very N00b friendly.

I installed this on a new site. I did not put it on a site with Posts already published.

I am experienced in Wordpress, but could not get the Top Table area where the overall comparisons are made, to load without 3 warnings . Louis did some tweaking for me and cleared it right up in minutes. Excellent support, so far.

I, too, found that the Custom Fields had be made in the Mass Apply Tool first or they don't show up in the Post. The tutorial mentioned this tool late in the explanations, which caused confusion. Again, it is probably just a lapse of communication with the docs.

The rating stars do show up in the published Posts without artificially adding reviews by just selecting the corresponding Custom Fields and then adding the value you want from 1 to 5. Leave the value blank and the stars aren't there until someone posts. You start out with whatever rating you want.

The blurb says supports Wordpress 2.7 and above, yet the plugin ships with the old style logout. Therefore, logging out so you can spam your own comments returns errors. Louis is fixing that now. If you have had to migrate older themes to 2.7 you should have encountered this already and have done the logout modification before and are familiar with it.

The look is nice and crisp. I did not take the time to adapt it to my own favorite themes, though I do not think that will be a big issue. I don't use anything as it comes out of the box so I don't have issues with it's themes.

Like any software, I do not like it to 'phone home'. It's like the Tracking202 paranoia: who's looking at things and what's being sent. I know the URL of the site where I installed on is recorded in my user account at wpreview.com. Oh well.

It does contain links in the footer, but i don't think that should bother anyone. I have no problem deleting from the footer whether they want it deleted or not.

Louis is very receptive to suggestions. On IM, I suggested the product names in the top summary table should be links and he had it modified in minutes.

I think it's good value. The only way to go would be the unlimited site license. Support is phenomenal. Recommended.

Eric
 
v1.1 is now out

I've just released version 1.1 of the plugin.

I received loads of feedback and have incorporated many of your suggestions.

The improvements in 1.1 are designed to make the plugin extremely easy to use, even for newbies. The documentation is more detailed, the plugin is easier to use, and there are no more PHP errors if things are not configured properly, instead, you are told how to fix it. Essentially all the things mentioned in this thread (as well as loads of things that weren't) have been addressed.

Additionally, a few new features were added, the most important being...

The site editor can now add ratings, and you can choose to use editor ratings instead of user ratings if you wish. This way you don't have to post a comment on one of your posts to ensure ratings show up.

The top items table can now be embedded in any theme, without the need to modify the theme code. All aspects of the table can be controlled from the WordPress admin area.

Also, you can also automatically generate 100s of comments based on comment templates. Thanks to mediastar100 for this suggestion.

Here's a screenshot of the auto-generate comments feature: http://www.wpreviewengine.com/images/autocomments.png

If anyone has any questions or comments, please let me know.

Also, I'm offering WFers 30% off until Friday, March 13th. Use the coupon code "wickedfire" when placing your order.
 
HBZSoftware hooked me up a while ago with some coding and did a stellar job. Anyone who grabs this plugin will definitely get their moneys worth. Just my $0.02.
 
HBZSoftware.com said:
Just an update: I've decided to extend the "wickedfire" coupon code for another week. It'll now only give you 20% off.
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Software looks solid - I personally don't use WP but looks like good stuff.

One point - you might want to mention you're using some of the cached Google JS libraries.. Some people might have an issue with that.
 
Thanks for pointing this out - but I'm not anymore. This was changed over to be only a few lines of self-hosted JS in v1.1.

The demo site is just running the old code.

yoink*gasp*, thanks for the comments.
 
I've been using reviewsPRESS and its not too bad. I've was considering getting the WPReview Site pluging.. but this looks way better -- thanks for the great work!
 
Hi HBZ,

Ok, I've been sitting on the fence about buying a WP review plug in (I was actually thinking of the WFreview plugin). I have 2 projects I've really wanted to set up around a review plug in, but haven't had the chance/motivation to go through with it.

Your software might just throw me over the fence. Now my time is the main limiting factor and it will be a while before I have a window to mess around with this type of plugging. But 2 things I would like to see:

1- Make one of the variable fields (software, guarantee, price) to list the 'categories' so users can find more of the same 'insert variable field'=category.

This way I can create categories of products/services so instead of software, I can use 'hosting type' and include shared/Virtual dedicated/dedicated/free and users can search by category (that is just an example, I don't target those phrases).

2- Make the stars clickable

PS, I really like the "WPReviewEngine Demo" theme
 
1. Great idea.

2. Could you elaborate?

I'll include both of these in the next version once I understand what you're looking for specifically.

Louis
 
Awesome job here... I've been debating review plugins for a while, sitting on some domains but the auto-comment feature pushed me over the edge, just purchased.

Looking forward to v2 - I'll send some thoughts once I've had a chance to play.
 
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