Sidebar widget placement for reviews

I would also like to see this happen!

2 shortcodes have been added. 1 for displaying reviews only (for use in a sidebar, homepage, etc) and 1 for displaying the current page’s reviews and the review form. The codes should be able to be placed anywhere you want on any page.

Any issues, please let me know. No styling has been done for showing reviews on any page, so for now you may need to roll your own CSS for that into your theme. An update to that may come later once everyone approves that it is working correctly for them.

Amazing! ??

great plugin bompus!

I recently installed your awesome plugin it works great! But I still can’t figure out how to display the reviews on the sidebar. I notice Customer Reviews under Settings it mentions:

An example would be to use this in the sidebar contents of a page, or maybe on the homepage. For this to work in a sidebar, the sidebar contents would need to be setup as a page, so the code can be inserted.

I been trying to figure this out for the past several hours, and I still cannot manage to display any of the reviews with the shortcode in the sidebar. I try displaying a page within a sidebar with the shortcode. But it only shows the shortcode itself not the actual reviews. I also try using the do_shortcode function to display that specific shortcode. Yet I still do not get any results. I even add the filter to display shortcodes in text widgets and still it does not work.

If possible could you please help me out on this, a client of of mine is need of this. I appreciate it thanks! ??

Oh wait I just realize just by reading:

the sidebar contents would need to be setup as a page, so the code can be inserted.

Pretty much I have to create a page and make that specific page set to look like a sidebar. I now understand. Hmm, strange I made a widget to display a page with that shortcode and yet it only display the shortcode itself not the actual review content. I believe I had restated already. lol

Wow.. I didn’t even realize that there was a do_shortcode function. I will do some research on adding shortcodes that can use this method, and then the plugin will have -REAL- shortcode support, instead of my own simple implementation of it. Thanks for pointing that out. Look for this to be added in the next update.

Hey no problem, I hope it will work out. ??

My next step is to actually try using an rss feed to pull it into a sidebar.

Also I read another forum here of someone mentioning about adding extra rating fields. Such as, a rating for stability, performance, value, etc. If you were to rate a product for example. I actually try adding an extra rating field into the plugin and it worked, but i haven’t manage or had the chance to have it upload to the database yet. I realize though by doing that you will have 2 different ratings and the hReview will only aggregate the overall ratings of all users. So I thought what if you had the option to have multiple rating fields in form, than somehow grab the average or overall rating of each field. Than from there grab each overall rating from each user than an SEO will grab that. Just a thought and that will make more complex. lol

Sorry for the typos, just to make it clearer what I meant was the ability to have custom rating fields. For example, you have a product and you allow users to rate its value, performance, stability, etc. Than being able to grab the user’s overall rating from each custom rating field in one form. From there grab ALL user’s overall ratings and make an overall rating of that. Than an SEO like Google will grab that. Hopefully that makes sense. I know people will want to see multiple ratings of a product or service.

And the rss trick didnt work, it manage to pull the review content. But it pulled everything, including the hidden fields and form.

…what do we (dummies) do to get the comments into a sidebar?

I’m working on the next update right now. It should be available by tomorrow morning and will include true (WP hook compliant) shortcode support.

2.3.7 includes support for “proper” WP shortcodes. Please try it out and let me know if it works for your purposes.

Hey bompus

is there a way i can limit the amount of characters in the sidebar? for shortcode:
[WPCR_SHOW POSTID=”ALL” NUM=”3″]

i have some reviews that are pretty lengthy, be great if i could limit the amount of words used for each review.

Hey Bompus,

You are awesome!!!!

We are actually happy that you fix that issue, and my boss wants to thank you for that.

I know you have been ask way too many questions to fix or add certain abilities to the plugin. But I notice one thing when using the shortocde in general. It does not show the star ratings. Is there a simple way to fix that? Sorry to bug you on that.

@jimbest63 – I forgot I was going to add a SNIPPET=”<length”> to that.. If a snippet is used, would it make sense to have a “more…” link that would take you to the URL of the page that the review was left on, and jump to that review on the page?

@joshvaz89 – Could you provide the URL for your page that is not showing the stars in the sidebar?

@bompas: SNIPPET=”<length”> would be perfect. and with the addition of a “more….” link i think it would give the plugin an overall better user experience. thumbs up from me.