jReviews Support Forum

Hi Guys,

I've been creating a new version of an old site in Joomla and want to implement the jreviews module into this. I've got the demo which I'm playing with to see if it will do what i want it to. I'm sure it will but i am really struggling to understand how it all works together. I didn't find the documentation that helpful in explaining it all.

My site is a Tenerife tourism website containing info on the island and includes a number of review sections. We (the website staff) review bars, clubs, and restaurants in our own way. We want to allow the users of the site (users will be unregistered) to read our review and then be able to submit a review underneath ours (after moderator approval). Obviously, we want to know about different things depending on what type of establishments they are reviewing. We already have a lot of our reviews (what I call our base reviews as its done by critics rather than the public) ported over to the joomla system so i woudl like to leave them as they are if possible. If not then i will be happy to readd them should the benefits be worth it.

We also want to have an automated review section for hotels. as we cant really get around all the hotels we want to leave this up to the users. By this i mean they can register a new review on a hotel that does not exist in our system and we then approve it should it be in depth enough. then other users can add their reviews below this and we again moderate these reviews.

Can you explain how I might go about setting this up? Any explanations (in dumb person terms :)) on how the different bits fit together would be much appreciated.

finally, should we get this up and running successfully in demo mode, can we then port the settings over when we get the full version?

I look forward to your responses.

Lee

I think all of this is possible. But instead of me repeating everything that is already in the documentation an video tutorials it would be easier for me if you tell me what you tried, what exactly you don't understand and where you got stuck.

The one thing to keep in mind is that for staff (editor) reviews you should enable editor reviews and put the userids of the users considered as staff in the correct field in config settings, reviews tab. You can also convert any user review  to an editor review in the review moderation screen.

Thanks for the reply.

I appear to have it working to some extent but I'm slightly confused about something after reading other posts on here.

Here is the ste as it stands. Its a development site where i'm trying different things out and i put in some test reviews: http://tfsuncovered.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=5&Itemid=35

Firstly, the review or content that is shown there was added with the joomla back end.This is the only way i know how to add content at the moment. If you click into that review, there is text i entered from the back ent of Joomla and then under that is where the user reviews would appear (from how I undersand this). If I'm logged in though i see a section called editor review. Whats this part and how should I use it?  Apologies if this is a dumb question, i'm trying to grasp it all still. Should I be posting a review somewhere within the JReviews software or am I OK to do this? I'd like to be able to keep adding the base reviews in the Joomla CMS if possible.

Secondly, if we have not reviewed a hotel (and no review thread for this hotel already exists) we want the user to be able to submit the first review and the page be created after its moderated. At the moment i'm unaware of how to publish an initial review.

Thirdly, on the page where all the reviews for a catagory would be listed, there is 2 'Read More' links for each review. One is from the Joomla CM and one from the Jreviews software. Have i set this up incorrectly?

I think that should get me started, and i hope it makes sense to you and I look forward to your feedback. :)

I have the money waiting to pay for the product, just wanting to be sure i can get this working the way I want it before i buy it.

Lee

I've updated the post above incase it was a little difficult to understand. Thanks for your patience.

There's a video tutorial (left column) which explains how to create menus for jReviews and one of those menus is for submitting new content in the frontend using your custom forms.


If you login in as superadmin you see the Editor Review because in the configuration settings, reviews tab you have editor reviews enabled and your userid, 62, is set as the default editor. Editor reviews are not counted towards the averate rating and have a different header at the top of content reflecting that there is an editorial review, or staff review.

Check the link you posted:
http://tfsuncovered.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=9

If you go to the jReviews administrator, config settings, review tab and turn off editor reviews, then reload the page above you will see the user review header appear on the page (it only shows if editor reviews are off). If instead you go to review moderation and convert this review to an editor review then you will see the other header appear. As I explained before if you want to have staff or editor reviews, you need to add each userid in the appropriate field to the reviews tab. Everyone else will just be considered a regular user.

Answered above. Create the menu for new item submissions and in the Access Settings in the jReviews admin, select the groups you want to moderate. For example, you can moderate content submitted by registered users only, and not administrators.

Also in the jReviews admin, in the forms tab, you can decide if during new item submissions you also want to show the user review form so it can be submitted together with the new content.


Which page? This one?
http://tfsuncovered.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=5&Itemid=35

There's only one read more link for each content there.

Alejandro,

Many thanks for getting back to me. Your patience is apreciated and I am now starting to grasp how it all fits together.

My third point about the read more link, I have solved by turning of the Joomla global setting of show 'read more' links. This just left the Jreviews 'read more' link thats added to the reviews.

One thing I am having a problem with is allowing guests to submit reviews. As we get a lot of visitors that are not registered on our current forum, I would prefer to enable guest reviews but obviously have them moderated. Can this be done?

Lee

Yes. Access Settings menu, Reviews tab in jReviews admin. Allow guests to submit reviews and force guest reviews to be moderated.

One more question!

Is there a way in which i can seperate reviews that have reviews by us and ones where only users have reviewed it.

for example:

We have a bar reviews section and a listing page that shows all the reviews that have been done. For all bars that have an official review by the site, they should appear at the top (ideally with a small thumbnail for them and seperated graphically)
Underneath you would have all the threads that users have created reviewing bars that we have not yet reviewed.
Then there is scope for us to review this bar with our review and it then appears in the top half section.

Lee

Easiest way to do this is to change the default ordering of content in lists to editor rating DESC. Then all items reviewed by you will appear on top and after that the ones reviewed by users. There's no way to separate them into two different lists though. The editor rated articles have a separate rating shown as blue stars instead of yellow.

I don't appear to have an option for 'editor rating DESC'. did you mean lowest/highest editor rating?

Is there any way to add a 'add new review' link rather than it ebing on the menu?

Ideally, I'd like users to go to the hotel reviews index page and have something that says 'Hotel not listed? Be the first to review this hotel by clicking here'

They click that link then it allows them to add a brand new thread for the hotel thats not in our listings yet. Because our menu's will evenually be quite long I woud like to avoid putting in unneccessary links like this.

Lee

Yes, that's the option for the ratings. Did you try it?

The "add new item" link appears at the top of category and section lists if the user has enough access permissions to see it. If you always want to show it, then edit the contentlist.html template and remove the conditional template that is around the url:

         <div class="jr_itemlist_new"><a href="{ADDNEW_URL}"><patTemplate:translate>_JR_ADDNEW_ITEM</patTemplate:translate></a></div>&nbsp;

If I was to do that then would all users be able to use that link to post a review?

I have done what i thought was right to allow guests to post a review but there is no link at the moment on the catagory page as shown below:

http://tfsuncovered.co.uk/index.php?option=com_jreviews&Itemid=40

And what was that? You have to select the groups in the CONTENT tab in ACCESS SETTINGS menu in the jReviews admin.

Only groups configured in the access settings can submit new items. It doesn't matter if they can see the link or not. This is for security purposes.

Actually, i did select this option but for some reason it didnt save. sorrty to waste your time.