Plugin: Reviews & Voting / Ratings

Synonyms: Star Ratings, Voting System, Five Star Review System

My testing site was on http://www.gerne.ch/

Watch out for compatibility with caching?

GD Rating System

is the successor to GD Star Rating plugin, but it has nothing in common with the old plugin.

An old version of this plugin was used on first etaktiker.ch

Deploy with this code in theme:

if (function_exists('gdrts_posts_render_rating')) {
  gdrts_posts_render_rating(['echo' => true, 'entity' => 'posts', 'name' => 'shop', 'id' => get_the_ID()]);
}

Problem with this plugin is that Google does not show star snippets in SERP.

• WP-PostRatings
  See below - special document area.

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! NEW VERSION IS OUT! OF KK SHIT RATING!

• kk Star Ratings
  problem with this plugin is that it is not maintained anymore. Besides that - it has all the nice features - just enough of them.

  In the past, we used this plugin and it has all the functions needed.

  As of somewhere in 2016, it is maintaned again by the same author. Checked: Uses AJAX for both loading and saving.

  Looking at the source code, it is worse than of WP Review. Stores all the values as post meta, with prefix _kksr

• WP Star Rating
  is very similar to plugins above, but with a slightly less configuration and uglier GUI.

• Taqyeem plugin is responsible for the review system in Sahifa theme. Seems very advanced, but simply too much for us.

• Star Rating is the simplest plugin for the task.

• WP Review Seems very nice. Works with caching plugins as it uses AJAX for loading, also. They state that it is the fastest review plugin.

  Uses AJAX for both loading and saving.

  We bought Pro version, and based on my analysys on source code, main differences in WP Review free and Pro versions are:

  • circle rating type,
  • an option to rate comments
  • somehow different handling of schema structured data

  Stores all the values as post meta, with prefix wp_review

• Author hReview There are two plugins of same author (WP Rich Snippets), and I’m not sure in differences.

• Rating-Widget: Star Review System
  needs registration to work properly as RatingWidget is a SaaS rating system for your blog. So, forget about it.

• Multi Rating
  Multi Rating WordPress Plugin Supports multiple criteria and questions and is nicely coded.

• YASR - Yet Another Stars Rating This plugin seems very good. Interesting is that YASR can import all the data from GD Star Rating, which isn’t maintained anymore, but it is “restarted” in 2016.

• Rating very small adoption and unknown author with no documentation or screenshots.

• Simple Rating Interesting one. Not tested anywhere.

• Universal Star Rating
  is for adding ratings/reviews by yourself only, not guests.

Sources & Articles

WP-PostRatings

I give up. Simply too much changes to do. Or maybe not?

This seems the best and simplest and has all the features and very nice documentation and FAQ. Not only that, but an author is an author of multiple high quality plugins (WP-Sweep one of them).

The problem is that Google Rich Snippets are shown as Article and not as Review, and Google testing tools shows some errors because of that.

There are also some other accompanying plugins like WP-PostRatings Cheater

After a lot of considerations, I decided not to use this script anymore.

Make it work with cashing plugins

GD Star Rating had an option: Enable dynamic loading of ratings by checking GD Star Rating -> Settings -> Features “Cache support option” Cache support with W3 Total Cache plugin

I also assume that works with cache plugins as expected, as it was addressed in year 2009. There are 2 solutions: one to use AJAX calls on voting, and second to clear the cache for that specific post after a rating is made.

Probably not needed.

Compatible with W3 Total Cache?

Under:

WP-Admin -> Performance -> Database Cache -> Ignored query stems. Put wp_postmeta and wp_ratings

[SOLVED] Atahualpa, WP Super Cache and WP Post-ratings HowTo: Fix WP-Email, WP-Polls, WP-PostRatings & WP-PostViews AJAX Problems digitalnature » Topics » Not working with W3-total cache

found the answer. just open the W3TC page and go to MINIFY section. then there’s a called “Never minify the following JS files: ” Add the JS url for example

http://YOUR-DOMAIN/wp-content/plugins/post-ratings/post-ratings.js

$this->clear_page_caches();

Rich Reviews

WP Review

Uses AJAX for both loading and saving. Stores all the values as post meta, with prefix wp_review

Problem is that only for one shop I get 19 results?

SELECT * FROM `etkwp_postmeta` WHERE `meta_key` LIKE 'wp_review_%'

or better:

SELECT meta_key AS key_name, COUNT(*) AS key_count FROM `etkwp_postmeta` WHERE `meta_key` LIKE '_kksr_%' GROUP BY key_name ORDER BY key_name, key_count DESC

List all the metas:

SELECT meta_key AS key_name, COUNT(*) AS key_count FROM etkwp_postmeta GROUP BY meta_key ORDER BY key_name, key_count DESC

kk Star Ratings

Stores all the values as post meta, with prefix _kksr

SELECT meta_key AS key_name, COUNT(*) AS key_count FROM etkwp_postmeta WHERE meta_key LIKE ‘kksr%’ GROUP BY key_name ORDER BY key_name, key_count DESC

WP Post Ratings

Has a valid uninstall hook that removes all the residues.

Creates its own ratings table plus writes in post meta table generating records with meta key starting with ratings_; only three of them per post: ratings_users, ratings_score', ratings_average

GD Rating System

This is a complete rewrite of an old famous plugin by the same Serbian author.

• Puts most of the data in separate tables and something in post meta etkwp_gdrts_itemmeta, etkwp_gdrts_logmeta, etkwp_gdrts_items, etkwp_gdrts_logs

• Doesn’t have uninstall hook and doesn’t remove its residues, but there is a separate option in Rating System > Tools > Reet / Remove that will manage everything in detail.

• It has a nice Votes Log for admin to analyze

Overall quite flexible plugin.

Alas, there is huge problem with GD Rating System!

Stars are not registered in Google SERP. The code is seems created perfectly well, but still not showing up?

<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/WebPage">
  <meta itemprop="name" content="Baldur Garten" />
  <meta itemprop="url" content="https://www.save-up.at/gutschein/baldur-garten/" />
  <span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating" itemprop="aggregateRating">
    <meta itemprop="ratingValue" content="4.0" />
    <meta itemprop="bestRating" content="5" />
    <meta itemprop="ratingCount" content="1" />
  </span>
</span>