Rating Dominator
January 16, 2008
Rating Dominator is a powerful plugin that easily turns your blog into a ratings/review site. Between the point-and-click DHTML rating system, the aggregator functions/widgets, and the usefulness ratings that contribute to the overall accuracy of the overall rating, Rating Dominator is a power-packed plugin for Wordpress.
Current Version: 3.0 (January 16th 2008)
Download: Download Rating Dominator Here
Wordpress Compatibility: Tested on 2.1+
Other Requirements: mySQL version 5+ (RD uses some crazy queries that require the newer mySQL functionality)
History:
I was looking for a high-quality ratings/review plugin so I could create some Web 2.0-ish sites for marketing affiliate products. I use Web 2.0-ish loosely, because the only 2.0ish about the sites was the interaction I wanted to have with the ratings. But unfortunately, I didn’t find anything that I could use. (Sound familiar? This is pretty much why I ever create a plugin… haha)
So I took the best ratings plugin that I could find at the time - Dan Grossman’s DG Review Site - and modified it heavily to give me the power and interaction that I needed.
The biggest changes I made was to add aggregators (Best Rated Posts, Most Helpful Reviewers, etc) and the Amazon-style ”Was this review helpful?” buttons. These buttons allow your users to effectively moderate the reviews for you. Normally, if your post has 9 ratings at 10/10, and 1 rating at 1/10, that drops your average rating to 9.1/10. But with the helpfulness ratings, if your readers mark the 1 rating as not helpful, then your post’s average rating goes back up to where it should be - 10/10. (This process happens slowly, and is based on how many helpful vs not helpful marks a rating gets)
Installation Instructions:
The unfortunate drawback of a powerful plugin is that it tends to be hard to install. Although I made Rating Dominator as easy as possible to install and use, there are some modifications you have to make to your theme. Because of the explanations needed, I’ve created a separate document for it, and provided quick links from this page.
You Must Do This First!
Display Rating Entry Fields
Usage:
Rating Dominator Theme Functions (Comments)
Display Useful Numbers
Sidebar Functions (Replaced by Widgets if your theme supports them)
Best Rated Posts
Most Helpful Reviews
Most Rated Posts
Members With Most Reviews
Top Categories (Depricated - No Widget Available)
Functions That Can Replace Some Options On The Plugin Options Page
Display Comment Ratings
Display Post Ratings
Known Bugs:
None
Because this plugin/widget is provided free of charge, I simply ask you to link back to Pressography.com in a post on your blog, or from one of your sites. It doesn't need to be anything fancy - just a note saying that you're using it, and whether or not you like it. However, there is no requirement that you do this, you're free to use the plugin regardless.
Danny Foo on 
whall on 
Skrat on 
xgravity23 on 
Jason
drsuccess
Eddy De Clercq
Jeffro2pt0
Jeremy
??? ??????????,??? ?????.
well for anyone that wants to use this plugin and has problems with the star ratings, here’s how you fix it:
In order to solve the problem with too many stars (or rather small pieces of a star) showing you need to edit the file called styles.css.
From line 33 an downward in that file you will find a progression of code that set how many pixels of the star image that will actually be shown. In order to be displayed correctly all the pixel settings need to be a multiple of 25. In other words 0, 25, 50, 75, 100 etc. This same progression happens twice in the CSS file, and you need to edit all instances of it.
Also, you need to ensure the setting is 25px in files RatingDominator.php and rating.js as well.
In the rating.js, it’s going to be line 10… = (rating * 25)+’px’;
In RatingDominator.php is going to be line 39… $image_width = “25″;
these fixes should take care of everthing along the lines of star images. Hope this helps!
Also, how do you implement the “did you find this review useful?” I see it in the template, but it doesn’t show up. I didn’t see anything in the instructions that spoke about it.
thanks!
marceia
I’m having issues with the image size as well. I’ve never used the plugin before, so I don’t have a previous version to go by. What size should I be making the stars? I have the same issue that Monica had - if I select say 4 stars - it shows 4.5 instead…
thanks!
I’m using the most recent installation of the plugin, btw.
What has happened the vidoes that came with rating dominator?
hey
i try to install script on wp 361
but it told me there ie error in file domaination.php at line 897
and not work well
please admin help me
i need this plugin
Hi,
Can you please post some demos using this plugin?
So how do I get this to work w/ wordpress 2.6.1? It doesn’t seem to work period.
are there any examples of websites created with this plug in?! Tx
I managed to sort out the problem with star size but have encountered another more serious problem - when a comment is marked as spam the rating still remains active on the site…
Is there some way around this, other than forcing all commenters to register and/or moderate each and every comment manually?
Sorry for not checking back sooner, I got involved with another project…
edenbugys, exactly what did you change the image size for?
Because I have only one ratings.gif graphic in the plugin folder, and that one seems to be 25×75 pixels both in the old and the current version.
Hi Jason, i was tryin out the plugin and actually some modification is needed for star rating (prob which Monica had), apparently u gotto change the img size to “25″ for .css, .js and RatingDominator.php
btw, i had problem running the “Helpful Review” part inside comment, as i click on either “Yes” or “No” it actually direct me to “404 Page Not Found” within my comment without reloading the whole page. hope u know wat i mean.
Any idea how to fix this? thanx
@Eli - I’m glad you like it, and thanks for the translation!
@lakhlili - You’re very welcome! Unfortunately, I don’t do any freelancing in helping people set up their sites. If there’s a problem with a plugin, I’ll do what I can to fix it, but as for setting up sites, I don’t get into that.
@Jason - Hi Jason, just passing by from a Google web search for review and ratings plugins and your site popped up on the second page of search results. I’m a newbie at WordPress, but I like what I see here and will download your plugin and attempt to configure it.
By the way, the poster in French said that he infinitely thanks you regarding giving him the authorization to download (télécharger means download in French) your software (logiciel), but he was not able to download your version. He also would like to ask you if you could help him create his website. And he thanks you in closing.
I’m in Montreal, Quebec, Canada so I know a bit of French even though I’m not French.
Sincerely, Eli.
I have used this plug in for some time I like it. I do have to admit that I really need do do some general maintenance and finalizing how ever it is a good plug in to use. I also have noticed that a service is being promoted similar to this plug in that cost a whole lot more. Great job Jason!
@Monica - It sounds like a problem with the image sizes - were you using a different star image from one of the premium themes offered through http://www.RatingDominator.com? If you were, you need to re-upload that image to the Rating Dominator plugin directory, over top of the one that’s there now.
I upgraded from your earlier version and it seems to work as it should, but the star images seem to have changed a bit. Although the max rating on my blog is 5 stars you can actually see 5,5 stars and a rating of 4.0 will actually visually look like a 4,5…
Did I get something wrong with the installation?
@lakhlili - I’m sorry lakhili, I don’t speak french
Je vous remerci infiniment de m’avoir autorisé à telecharger votre logiciel,
mais je n’ai pas pu telechargé la version
Aussi, je voudemanderais de m’aider à créer mon site web
Merci infiniment
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