REALTYNA - SALES DEPARTMENT

Last update: Feb, 7th, 2019

Contents of this Manual are applicable to the WPL Review and Ratings Add-On. Details of this Manual may be different based on the customizations you have or your software.

Introduction

This Manual contains information about the Review and Ratings Add-On, an extension for the WPL plugin.

Realtyna has developed a specialized Review add on for WPL that has the Review feature as well as the Rate a Property feature. Like the WPL itself, it is developed to satisfy most business needs and can be customized based on different business needs. For example, one can add as many rating types as needed and can easily manage them through the backend. If one needs 2 rating types such as “Room Service” and “Breakfast” for hotels, they can be added as well.

The commenting also enables one to reply to comments (nested reply), as well as having the words filtered, etc.

System Requirements

To use the Review Add-on you will need the following:

WPL PRO. (Do not install any add-on on WPL basic)

Installation

If you have the Installation Package of the Review Add-On, you can upload it from the following path: WordPress->WPL dashboard->Install Addon form.

Configuring the Review Add-On

Like other WPL settings, the Review settings are placed in the WPL->Settings menu. After navigating to this menu, you will see a new category called "Review". By opening this tab, you will see all of the review configurations.

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Review access

The first and most important setting is the access level for submitting reviews and rating. The top option is the most unrestricted option and descends to the more restricted options.

The first option allows all website guest visitors to submit reviews and rate a property.

The difference between the second and third option is on the registration of a WordPress user in WPL. It is possible that your website has users (WordPress users) who are not registered in WPL.

The fourth option is added to enable you to choose who can rate and submit reviews for properties. After installing the Review Add on, a new access is added to WPL called Review. If you only need to enable some groups of users (or single users) to rate a property, you can simply allow/disallow them through the Review access. For more information about access levels please refer to the main WPL manual.

Allow nested reviews

You may have seen forums that enable people to reply to comments. This feature is also available in the Review Add on and you can enable it by using the nested reply to comments.

Reviews order

You can choose whether to show the last submitted review on the top of the page or vice versa. Ascending means to have the latest at the end.

Prohibited words

Like most review softwares, you can restrict bad words in a review as well. WPL checks reviews before showing them in frontend and converts bad words to **** words. You can also remove bad reviews from the WPL backend if needed.

Review maximum characters

If you need to restrict users to enter comments with a certain number of characters, you can set this feature here also. As the user enters his comment, a dynamic word count is run and shows the number of characters that are left.

Review auto publish

You can choose whether to publish reviews automatically or review before publishing them. You can see and manage reviews submitted from the “Reviews” menu in the WPL backend.

Review Like

You can enable the like/dislike feature of the WPL Review Add-on. By enabling this feature, visitors of your website can like/dislike reviews. You can disable or dislike from the review activity settings.

Like Access

It is the same as Review access above.

Manage Rate Types

As mentioned in the introduction, you can add rating types based on your needs. The interface is quite apparent in WPL. You can add rating types, delete or disable them, and sort them. You can manage review types by navigating to the WPL->Review Add on menu.

After that you can add a new rate type by clicking on the "+" icon or by managing the existing rate types.

Note: You can manage rate types for other entities such as "User", "Complex" and "Neighborhood" as well if you have these entities. The WPL Review Add on is designed to work for all of the WPL entities, not only property.

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Manage Reviews

By changing the page dropdown in the "Review Add on" menu to "Property - Reviews" you can see the list of reviews and manage them.

Using this page, you can remove or disable reviews if needed. Other than these rating types, an overall rating option is always shown for a property to display the overall rating. However, this item is read-only. This means it is generated based on all of the rates for all rate types. No one can rate it independently.

Configuring the Review Activity

After installing the Review Add on, a new activity will install on your WPL to create a review and rate form on the frontend of your website. You can manage it by navigating to WPL->Activity Manager and search for "review".

This activity should be enabled otherwise it won't show on the property details page. By clicking on the edit icon of this activity you can configure the review activity options.

1. Listing Type: You can restrict the display of the review activity to only one specific listing type. You can do this by setting the “Listing Type”. For example, if you have both “For Sale” and “For Rent” properties on your website, you may only want them to be shown on the “For Rent” properties.  You can do this here.

2. Rating: If you don't want to show the rating form, you can set it to “No”.

3. Review: If you don't want to show reviews, you can set it to “No”.

4. Likes: If you want to show the like/dislike feature for reviews, you can set it to "Yes".

5. Like Method: "Both" will show both of the like and dislike buttons. "Only likes" shows only the like button and "Only Dislike" shows only the dislike button.

Note: Each user (even the admin user) can add a like or dislike to a certain review.

Note: The Admin user can insert multiple rates and reviews for all listings.

After configuring the review activity you can see the review form in the property details page based on your configurations.

Adding the review to other entities

The WPL Review Add on can be used for other entities such as "Complex", "Neighborhood" and "User". To configure this add on for new entities please follow these steps below:

Add rate types for entity

Navigate to the WPL->Review Add on and select your desired rate types from the "Page" dropdown and then add your new rate types by clicking on the "+" icon.

Add review activity for other entities

After adding all of your Rate Types, you should add a review activity to the details page of the entity.

If you're adding a review feature to the Complex entity, there is no need to add a new review activity. The default activity will work on both the property and complex entities.

If your desired entity is "Neighborhood" (added by the WPL neighborhoods add on) you should assign the review activity to the nshow_position2 or nshow_position3 positions.

If you want to add the review feature to the "User" entity, you should assign the review activity to the profile_show_position1 position.

If you want to add the review feature to a custom entity, its position depends on the details page of that entity.

Note: Customizing the style of the review activity might be needed due to the entity details page design.