[edit: i've now added Starred Review to the Wordpress Plugin Directory as version 1.1a which from now on automatically updates itself. enjoy]

I’ve added support for Wordpress Widgets to Starred Review. Along with some minor backend formatting alterations, no where near the quality it should be, but that’s for another day. I’ve also tidied-up the actual output, a bit more readable- less of that ‘classes’ jumble. 

So Download Starred Review 1.1a, just overwrite the current plugin and make sure (if you’re not using widgets) you’ve got the new badge code:

<?php starred_review_badge('limit', 'category');?>

Starred Review 1.1 supports Wordpress 2.7.1, will soon have a Dashboard Widget for OS X and be listed on the WP Plugin Repository (if only they’ll email me confirmation?) all that good stuff just round the corner! Thanks to Peter at Apartment One Six for his widget tutorial.

If you’d like to see any future updates / additions, just let me know (via the comments feed or email). I’m pretty happy with this revision but let me know if you find any issues with this one!

Looking to add widget support to a wordpress plugin. There’s a lot of misinformation online, its out of date, incomplete or just wrong- I know because I’ve been working on bringing my plugin: up to date.

Peter’s Widgetizing a Wordpress Plugin was an invaluable resource- i can’t say better than that. Read his thorough and exact example for a quick way into wordpress widgets, and check out the rest of Apartment One Six.com I can see it being very helpful in the future.

I don’t like the K2 404 page. You’ll only see this when the author (that’s me in this case) makes a fatal mistake or the hosting server has hiccups… but the basic ‘file not found’ page that ships with Wordpress’ most popular theme is awful. The problem is it doesn’t look like a warning page. It offers no additional options, simply points users in the right direction, basically says- “pff, work it out”.

What was not obvious to me was how to override this mess of a information page. How to do it? PHP includes? some form of redirect or did it involve .htaccess

No. To override the default K2 404, which is automatically generated from theloop.php all you need do is place an a file in your wordpress directory called 404.php

Wonderful. What do you think: metacomment.com/blog/404.php

I know there’s a magic plugin out there called ‘recommended posts’, I’d love to tie this in with the 404 page (using the faulty address as a starting point), to give suggestions. Maybe even implement live-search, perhaps a quick email to the blog’s author. Subject: Another 404

Two years ago I released a patched version of a great little Wordpress plugin called “Starred Review” by Marc Hodges. It didn’t really work that well, it still doesn’t rock the casbah but is now stable on Wordpress 2.7.

Download Starred Review for Wordpress.

You need to upload the starred-review folder and starred-review.php to your ‘plugin’ directory. There’s a readme file in the folder. A changelog too. Fun, eh? Notice (old Starred Review users) that the ‘badge’ code has changed (at least this is true with Wordpress 2.7.1), it is now:
< ?php starred_review_badge('limit', 'category'); ?>

Here’s the homepage: metacomment.com/starred-review/, I promise to upload some CSS magic, an installation tutorial and make good on some old ideas. Thank you!

I’ve made Starred Review (a plugin now unsupported by its author) play with Wordpress 2.2+ [Download Starred Review 1a]. It still needs a little tinkering, but I really love this little plugin, this weekend I should get round to clearing up. If you’re interested drop me a line. There was a little interest last year when I released a ‘patched’ version, and although there are other plugins out there that do the same thing- but since I’ve got my database setup for Marc’s “Starred Review” it seems to make sense to carry it forward. Any requests?

Short Term Goals:
- Support for Wordpress 2.1+
- Images (Album Artwork)
- RSS
- Built in Amazon / iTS [automation of linking]

Long Term:
- Multiple Pages / Search
- Widget for OS X [add reviews from Dashboard / iPhone]
- A word or two [space for a mini 'review' rather than just stars]
- CSS control from the options panel

For now, I’m sorry I lost the original patched version- the file doesn’t exist on my hard disk, and I don’t have .Mac anymore… that was where the file was hosted. I do have the Archive.org version of the original how-to / files.

Update: You can now Download Starred Review. It sort of works too.