This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

JKL Reviews

Description

As an avid reader myself, I wanted a better way to save the best of the best of
what I read on my blog. I wanted a way to quickly and easily save book information,
my 5-star rating, and external links out to the book and its resources to save for
my own future and personal reference.

The primary functionality of this plugin is to store book (or product) information
in a Custom Meta Box beneath your Post editor (in the back-end) that will then be
displayed in its own “ratings ID card” at the top of your Post (in the front-end).

Best of all: This plugin allows you to quickly input all the relevant information
and links related to your review and have those consistently display in the same
(responsive) format in your Posts without you ever needing to worry about styling
or formatting the review boxes yourself. This allows you to spend more time writing
the review itself and less time worrying about the display of your review.

In short: This plugin makes writing reviews fun and simple as the styling is all
taken care of for you.

Requires WordPress 3.5 and PHP 5.

Special Features

  • Multiple Review Types supported
  • FontAwesome icons
  • 8 color choices for the box header
  • Light and Dark display box styles
  • Range slider to select your rating
  • Uses WordPress’s native Image Chooser to add a Cover Image
  • Responsive design (front-end and back-end)
  • Affiliate link support
  • WordPress Options page
  • Ability to enable or disable Affiliate link disclaimer on WP Options page
  • Ability to enable or disable Affiliate link disclaimer on individual Posts after enabling that functionality in WP Options

Information Stored by the Plugin

  • The Title
  • Author name
  • Cover image
  • Category
  • Book Series
  • Star-rating
  • Summary
  • External links
    • Affiliate/Product purchase link
    • The Book’s homepage
    • The author’s homepage
    • The book resources page

Additional Reviews Types supported

  • Book
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Course
  • Product
  • Service
  • Other

Planned Upcoming Features

  • Custom Post Type
  • Custom Taxonomy
  • Shortcode
  • Ability to link between Categories (like WP Tags)
  • Ability to display all of a certain Review Type (like WP Categories)
  • Parameters big and small to change the display box features
  • Override (optional) the Post Featured Image with the Cover Image you choose
  • Overlay Star-ratings over the Featured Image on index pages
  • CSS animations
  • Dropdown menu to select different icons for external links or Review Type
  • Translations
  • (More ideas? Let me know!)

Translations

  • English (EN) – default
  • Korean (KO) – upcoming

If you want to help translate the plugin into your language, please have a look
at the .pot file which contains all definitions and may be used with a [gettext]
editor.

If you have created your own language pack, or have an update of an existing one,
you can send your [gettext .po or .mo file] to me so that I can bundle it in the
plugin.

Contact Me

If you have questions about, problems with, or suggestions for improving this
plugin, please let me know at the WordPress.org support forums

Want updates about my other WordPress plugins, themes, or tutorials? Follow me @jekkilekki

Support

Click here to visit the forum for this plugin

Acknowledgements

This plugin uses:

  • jQuery licensed under MIT License or GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2
  • FontAwesome licensed under SIL OFL 1.1;
    Code licensed under MIT License
  • Material Connection Disclosures
    as found on Michael Hyatt’s website and in compliance with FTC Guidelines

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms
of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this
program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth
Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

Screenshots

  • Custom Meta Box on the Post Editor page
  • Review box display on the Post itself (defaults)
  • Dark review box with different header color
  • Responsive view of the Review box (Light and Dark)
  • Possible color combinations for the Review box
  • WP Options page

Installation

Automatic installation

  1. Log into your WordPress admin
  2. Go to Plugins -> Add New
  3. Search for JKL Reviews
  4. Click Install Now
  5. Activate the Plugin

Manual installation

  1. Download the Plugin
  2. Extract the contents of the .ZIP file
  3. Upload the contents of the jkl-reviews directory to your /wp-content/plugins
    folder of your WordPress installation
  4. Activate the Plugin from the Plugins page

Documentation

Full documentation of the Plugin and its uses can (currently) be found at its GitHub page

FAQ

Tips

As a general rule, it is always best to keep your WordPress installation and all
Themes and Plugins fully updated in order to avoid problems with this or any other
Themees or Plugins. I regularly update my site and test my Plugins and Themes with
the latest version of WordPress.

How can I change the style of the plugin to match my website?

While there is currently no built-in Color Chooser to allow for full customization
of the plugin styles (though that is being considered for future releases), each
element within the jkl_review_box contains its own unique CSS identifier, allowing
you to hook into those in your own Custom CSS stylesheet.

Additionally, there are now (since version 1.2) 8 different header color choices
and 2 box style choices (Light and Dark) that you can choose from in the WP Options
Page. These are not currently available to mix and match on individual Post pages.
Whichever style you choose in WP Options will be the style for the entire site.

Why doesn’t the Cover Image show up when I select it?

In order to immediately display the Cover Image after you select it, this plugin
would need to run AJAX (something it currently does not do). So, in order to see
the preview of your Cover Image in the Custom Meta Box, you need to first
either Save Draft or Publish or Update your Post so that it saves the
meta data first.

What if I don’t know the some of the links for the product?

Simple: just leave those spaces blank. The plugin tests for the presence of data in
each input location and ONLY displays the data which it has saved. If you don’t
give it data in a particular field, it won’t display that field at all on the Post page.

Why doesn’t the Affiliate Link disclaimer show up?

You need to enable the Material Disclosures option in the WordPress Options page
for this plugin. After doing so, you’ll be shown a preview of the Disclosures in
your preferred box style (Light or Dark). You will then be able to choose whether
or not to include the Disclosures on a Post-by-Post basis in the last of the
Custom meta boxes.

Why can’t I specify the `Other` Review Type?

There is currently no functionality to input or modify the Other Review Type
although this may be a feature to be considered for future releases.

Why doesn’t the Reviews plugin show up on my WordPress Pages?

The plugin’s current functionality only places it on WordPress Posts. Later, there
will be a Custom Post Type released for this plugin as well as additional display
options, but for now, the plugin will only work on WordPress Posts.

How can I add multiple {authors, series, categories, images, links, etc}?

Currently there is no way to add (linking) multiples of anything. If you want to
add multiple authors, series, or categories, just type in the two (or more) names
in the appropriate fields. If you want to add multiple images, use the Post Editor
to do so. If you want to add additional links, specifiy those in the Post Editor.

What if I want to add Tags to the Review for easier searching?

If you want to add Tags, please use the Post Tags in the default WordPress Post
editor. Tags specifically for Reviews will not be implemented until the Custom
Post Type for Reviews is released.

FontAwesome is not displaying properly on my site or taking too long to load.

Please send me a detailed description of your error and a link to the site with the
issue so that I can have a look.

The display box style is broken/messed up on my site.

Please send me a detailed description of your error as well as a screenshot so that
I can take a look at it. Things to include in your message include: (1) Your WordPress
installation version number, and (2) The Theme you are using (and its version
number – if relevant).

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“JKL Reviews” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “JKL Reviews” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.2

  • Added WP Options page
  • Made Material Connection Disclosures box optional with a checkbox
  • Added a Dark box style
  • Added 8 different header color choices based on colors in the JKL Reviews Icon
  • Added an attribution link at the bottom-right of the plugin

1.1

  • Added Material Connection Disclosures to comply with FTC regulations for affiliate links and the like

1.0

  • Initial release