Review site – how best to set up categories, ratings, etc?

  • Hi, I just recently dove into setting up my first WordPress site. I will be maintaining a product review site — many of which share common categories — and I would like something similar to the following capabilities. (my site is not about cars but the examples are easily relatable)

    Automobiles
    Trucks
    – 4 cylinder/6 cylinder
    – 4 door/2 door
    – Red/Black/Blue
    – Rating using WP Product review
    Cars
    – 4 cylinder/6 cylinder
    – 4 door/2 door
    – Red/Black/Blue
    – Rating using WP Product review

    Bicycles
    Mountain Bicycles
    – 18 speed/10 speed
    – 26 in/29 in
    – Rating using WP Product review
    Road Bicycles
    – 18 speed/10 speed
    – 26 in/29 in
    – Rating using WP Product review

    So, the idea is that the different products reviewed on the site will belong to a larger category (Automobiles, Bicycles), and they may share characteristics within those categories (a red truck may have 2 doors, a blue car may have two doors).

    What is the best way to set up my new site in WordPress to be able to arrange the reviewed products by these different categories? (i.e. have a page show me a list of all Red products, or all 2 door products, or all Automobile Ratings, etc)

    I’ve spent some time playing around with Pages/Categories and the WP Product review plugin, but I don’t want to get too far off in the wrong direction.

    I also noticed that the WP Product review plugin adds a variable to the Posts titled “option_overall_score.” This question might be better asked of the WP Product review devs…is there an easy way to create a collated page of all the reviews on the site so as to sort the products by Rating?

    Thanks for any help; much appreciated!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • If you want the items to be COMPLETELY separated by category (i.e. clicking on “18 speed” under “road bikes” would NOT also display “18 speed” mountain bikes), then creating Categories and Sub-categories under those would probably be the best way to go.

    (Sub-categories can remain separated. The best way to see that is to look at the Category “slug”. You’ll probably have one say “18-speed” and another “18-speed-2” or something like that as the default – unless you change them.)

    However, if you WANT 18 speed road bikes AND mountain bikes to show up TOGETHER whenever “18 speed” is clicked on, then the best way to do that is to use Tags rather than Categories. Tags are like keywords that can be used across multiple Categories and Posts.

    Why don’t you just give it a try for a few posts to see how things work? You can always go back in and readjust things as necessary. Maybe try out 10 Posts first in the style you think will work best, and then if it doesn’t do what you want, try something different before your site gets too big to make changing things harder.

    Thread Starter remixer85

    (@remixer85)

    Thanks for the comment! Really helped to show that I’m thinking in the right direction. I’m playing around with the tags now as well. I’m not a fan of the tag cloud widget, but I can set up a Page with links to the permalinked tags for quick search results to the most recent reviews in those tags/categories.

    Even if I have to maintain a manual list on a separate page, It would be cool to have a sortable functionality similar to an excel list. Each product listed in the first column, with the other categories in columns to the right, also sortable. Then each product clickable in the first column to go directly to that product’s review. Not automated and driven by the new Posts, but functional.

    If you want a table that is sortable (even the user can click and sort it as they view it), check out the TablePress plugin by TobiasBG. It’s the closest thing to an active Excel spreadsheet I’ve used in a WordPress site before. It would require manual updating for new Tags, but it’s a great plugin.

    Thread Starter remixer85

    (@remixer85)

    That table is perfect. Appreciate the help; thank you!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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