Starred Review
This is a piliminary shot at a home-page for Wordpress Plugin called “Starred Review”.
For updates and support see the Wordpress Plugin Directory / Starred Review.
The idea is we watch a lot of films, read a tonne of books and enjoy various radio and tv programmes. Wouldn’t it be nice to catalog the good ones even if we’re not prepared to sit down and write-up a great long post about it all. Starred Review is based on an old (and now abandoned) project started by Mark Hodges.
Starred Review has two parts; the first is a ‘badge’ which displays a short list of most-recent reviews, can be added to your blog via the Wordpress widget where you can customise the number of reviews shown or limit the review category.
The second part of Starred Review is a page of reviews, a full list of your reviews- with some display options for readers. Both need a little perfection, but can be done quite well with CSS.
Download:
To install:
Drag the ’starred-review’ folder into your wordpress ‘plugins’ directory. Activate the plugin through your WP Admin page, then ‘install & configure’, which is accessible through the ’settings’ tab in WP Admin. You can use Starred Review by adding it to your sidebar as a Widget. Or you can manually add the following code to your template:
<?php starred_review_badge('limit', 'category'); ?>
The above covers the ‘badge’- that is a shortlist of your latest reviews. You can also create a Page that lists all your reviews, it offers a little customisation at the moment, it is a work in progress. Add this code to a blank page to access all the reviews:
<?php starred_review(); >
At the moment the only further FAQ & Install Notes I can offer are the archived pages from the original site. They can be found here and also here on Archive.org.
Help:
So. Hope that works, contact me with any problems using the comments form on this page…
If you installed the plugin and it simply doesn’t appear to work- you may need to manually “Install” the plugin:
under ‘plugins’ in the Wordpress dashboard there should a highlighted (should be activated) ‘Starred Review’, there’s a link in the description to the ‘Install & Configure’ page. Which will initiate the database (this will be automatically done on plugin activation in the future, needs some work!).
Similarly- if you’ve upgraded from Marc Hodge’s plugin or a BETA version- you will need to update the database :
under ‘plugins’ in the Wordpress dashboard there should a highlighted (should be activated) ‘Starred Review’, there’s a link in the description to the ‘Install & Configure’ page.
For reference; here’s my original post about Starred Review, here’s Starred Review Patched and here’s an initial outline re. what I’d like to do with this plugin. Enjoy.
i have try to install thsi plugin but..when i go to setting i see “starred reviews” but if i touch it…i see a white page ..
@theold- you need to install ‘Starred Review’. go to Wordpress Dashboard > Plugins [../wp-admin/plugins.php]. You should see a list of activated plugins, hopefully Starred Review should be listed as ‘activated’, in the description there is a link to “Install & Configure”- just click that link and follow the instructions.
If that doesn’t work, try re-installing the plugin from this link. If you still have problems, let me know.
no way.. i tried again but when i try to open “Install&Configure” i see a white page.
there is (or rather was- fixed now) a problem with new installs of wordpress and user permissions. seems wordpress sets new users as ‘0′, there’s a database call in this plugin that required 8+, which worked in wordpress 1+, but seems outdated now.
IF you didn’t have enough permission- the plugin would show either an error, or a blank page. Woops. the error is fixed now. Please install Starred Review 1.3, thanks.
working on the blank page issue, will be in touch via e-mail…
i’m having that same problem. i activate the plugin, when i go to “You Need to Install & Configure this plugin before you can start” it just show me a blank page. i would love to use this plugin, any progress fixing this? :)
I get an error on my local machine and a white screen on my server.
UPDATE: this is an issue with certain builds of PHP 5, so i’m currently working our how to validate / upgrade the PHP 4 code. Expect an update shortly.
Can anyone be specific about which version of PHP they’re running i.e. 5.2.9. As I’m running PHP 5.0.1 on a separate domain (this site uses PHP 4) and Starred Review runs great there, as it does here.
Confirmed: doesnt work php5.2.9, and php5.2.6
my biggest issue with this plugin is that the order should be names first, star rating second ie:
“Drag Me to Hell”
5 stars
or
5 stars
“Drag Me to Hell”
one of these makes more sense than the other (*hint, it’s not the second one)
also, it would be nice if there was a way for the reader to see all reviews, instead of just the number shown, ie: if the author/reviewer only shows 5 reviews on his page for the sake of keeping his page uncluttered, then those would be the only 5 reviews that the readers could ever see, unless the author constantly changes the review display settings.
@unimpressed – you can do both of these things: the first point you mention (name / rating) is personal preference and can be altered through clever use of CSS.
the second – you mean we have a ‘random’ 5 reviews rather than date based? that’s an interesting idea, and could be done… leave it with me. at the moment, through the use of the:
< ?php starred_review(); >used on a Wordpress ‘Page’ your visitors can access / sort all your reviews.
thanks for your feedback.
Oh to note, this is not working on PHP Version 5.2.6
The wordpress site has a listing for a version 2.0 but I just get a message “Sorry, but you don’t have a high enough user level to install this plugin, you need to have a minimum level of 8 to install Starred Review.”
I don’t understand, I am the admin
HI,
I’m trying to use your plug-in on Wordpress 2.8.2. I installed it but it won’t configure. It says “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.”
Do you know how to correct this?
ever since the update to wordpress 2.8.1, whenever i try to access the starred review plugin, i receive the “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page” error. i’ve checked all the file permissions on the server and they’re all correct, as well as user permissions for the database, and i still keep getting the same error. some people on the wordpress forums have suggested that it may be an issue that needs to be fixed by the developer. might want to check and see if anyone else is having the same problem
@ Jae / Broken – the issue should be an easy one to solve… it appears the developers of Wordpress have changed the way plugins use user privileges. give me a day or so, i’ll find a solution! thanks for bringing this to my attention folks.
any news on the permissions issue?
any word on an update?
Also looking forward to a fix – this looks like the exact plugin I need. :-(
regarding the permissions problem, has anyone tried this script / tutorial: http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2006/03/28/wordpress-error-you-do-not-have-sufficient-permissions-to-access-this-page/
just upgraded to 1.4 of your plugin, still doesn’t work. also tried the link you suggested, it ran successfully, but i still keep getting the permissions error. i’m currently running wordpress 2.8.3
Same here, WP-Version 2.8.1, plugin downloaded today and I can’t install it I got the permission error….
Problem still exists on 2.8.4 as well..
This looked like the exact plugin I’ve been looking for too, but as the admin of the blog, I do not have permission to run install & config. Running WP 2.8.4.
same problem here! running WP v2.8.4 and it says that i do not have permission to run install & config. any news on the fix?
After activating the plugin, I go to Starred Review to install and configure, but get the error that I do no thave permission to access.
Is the fix for this problem expected any time soon?
[...] John on Sep.11, 2009, under Blog This is a guide to manually modify the source code for the Starred Review plugin in order to resolve the recent “permissions” error that has shown up since [...]
To everyone who is having trouble with the starred review plugin and receiving the permissions error, I got a little impatient and decided to try and fix the problem on my own. After doing some research, I’ve managed to make it work again by adjusting the code a bit, and everything seems to be functioning normally now. You can find a link to my post here: http://jbfabrications.com/290/starred-review/
which lays out the solution so you can modify the plugin on your own and get it back up and running.
John, thanks again- your patch has now been incorporated into Starred Review 1.4.1 which is available from Wordpress’ plugin pages.
I hope all your installation issues have cleared up with version 1.4.1+ don’t hesitate to get in touch with any further complaints and/or feature requests. This is still quite a simple plugin, has far to go. Thanks!
Any updates !!!??