Reviewer WordPress Plugin Review

There are an absolute ton of review WordPress plugins out there on the net.  If I had to take a wild guess, I would say there are over 1,000 of them.  I took several weeks sorting through them to find one I thought would work for my site.  I’m so glad I found Reviewer!  Some of them are great while others of them are less than great.  But, here at tbwhs.com, I updated my rating plugin to Reviewer, which I needed bad since GD Star hasn’t been updated in 2 years.  I hate when plugins haven’t been updated in so long.  It makes me wonder about the next WordPress updates, and if everything is going to come crashing down.  Make sure you read my best practices on picking out a WordPress plugin if you haven’t already.  But, in this article, I want to show you everything you get with the Reviewer plugin.  So let’s take a look at all the features.

Demo of Reviewer:

I would invite you to check out this video that shows what the Reviewer plugin can do for your website:

Also, if you want to poke around the backend of the settings with Reviewer you can go to this demo site where you can play around with the configurations:

https://evographics.net/envato/demo-reviewer/wp-login.php

username: reviewer

password:  reviewer

Also, you can take a look at the front end of this plugin at https://codecanyon.net/item/reviewer-wordpress-plugin/full_screen_preview/5532349

Features of Reviewer

• Unlimited review templates (easily customize colors, font sizes, etc.).
• Place multiple reviews on one page or post.
• Unlimited criteria that you can have people rate.
• Make tables easy that show side by side comparisons of your reviews.
• User Rating/ Author Rating.
• Supports custom post.
• Either star rating system or a full rating system.
• Easy to manage ratings.  Disable or customize what people need to do to rate.
• Nine customizable themes.
• Replace star icon with custom images.
• Shortcodes.
• API support.
• Import and Export data.
• Sort reviews by latest reviews, top score reviews, top rated reviews, top users score reviews, and combo 1 | author score + user score.
• Supports Google Rich Snippet.
• WordPress localization support.
• Works with WordPress 4.0.1+.
• Retina Support.
• Responsive layout.

Templates

When you log into your WordPress dashboard and have Reviewer installed, you’re going to need to configure the template you’re going to use for your reviews.   You can have as many templates as you want.  For me, since I run a web hosting review site I have a template for my hosting reviews.  Bare in mind, if you had WordPress plugin reviews, template reviews, widget reviews, etc., you might want them to look a little different based on what you’re reviewing.  Also, the criterion would probably be different.

Minimum Score

Configure this to 0.  Meaning the lowest people can rate is 0.

Maximum Score

Means, whatever you want the max score to be.  For me, I am using 5 points.  You can have it at anything you want.  7, 10, 50, 100, etc.

Score Percentages

Define what you want the percentages to be.  For me, I am using 30-69.

Review Criteria

Here you’re going to put in what you want people to rate.  For instance, my site I rate different host in six different categories; overall, reliability, server speed, customer support, features, and cost.  You can have as many criteria as you want.  It’s a good idea to keep your templates separate if you have different kinds of reviews.  For instance, hosting reviews would be different than WordPress themes.

Theme Preferences

Nine themes are integrated with the Reviewer plugin.  If you hover over them, you will see how they change based on what theme you’re using.

Customize Your Colors

Next, you can customize your text color, total score box color, users score box color, high score color, low score color, pros label color, pros label font size, pros text font size, cons label color, Cons label font size, and cons text font size.

Customization Preferences

Next, you can change the labels.  Here are the categories total score label, user score label, pros label, cons label, message to rate, message to rate (login required), success message after rating, failure message after rating, and then the replace star image.  With the replace star image you can use a star or use a customized image.  Do make sure you click 5-star after making any changes.  If you have a caching plugin installed to make sure you clear your cache before viewing the changes.  It also helps to disable the caching plugin while you are making adjustments.

Reviews

Just shows all your stats on the backend.  For instance, it will show the title of the post, which posts the review is on, total score, user score, post ID, review ID, actions (you can reset ratings if you want).

Preferences

Making changes on the fly are easy with Reviewer.  You just click on Reviewer > Preferences and then you will see the preferences settings.

Rating Authorization

You can allow ratings for:

• all users
• Logged in users only
• disabled

Rating Mode

• Five stars rating (fancy name for a 5-star rating system)
• Full rating

Add Review In Following Post Types

• Post
• Page
• Attachment
• Revision
• Nav-Menu_Item

Import/Export

Since Reviewer is only offered from Code Canyon, you have to deactivate and reinstall the plugin whenever there are updates from the developer.  It’s easy to import and export your changes when new updates come out.  To import and export, you’re just going to click on either import or export.

Support

This plugin does come with customer support.  With a lot of plugins I have messed with over the years, it’s kind of like your on your own if you have a problem or issues.  For instance, I was using GD Star, and I finally got tired of the support.  I would email the developers of GD Star and never get a response.  Rather than keep sweating the next WordPress update I decided to go ahead and purchase Reviewer from Code Canyon.  The support is outstanding with this plugin.  I have emailed Michele Ivani many times for help with the plugin.  He has walked me through the entire process of making some fundamental changes.  Even did a team view to help with a custom import that he created for my hosting review site.

Reviewer API

This plugin does have API support.  I have configured it with my Genesis WordPress plugin, and there were no conflicts.

Inserting Review In Post

To insert a review on pages or post, it’s easy.  Make sure they are enabled for either page of post that you’re trying to insert the review on.  Then you’re going to either click on the icon that on the top of your WordPress content.  I highlighted it in red 🙂

On the screenshot above I am showing the backend settings to my 1and1 review.

You should be able to add tables or reviews in.  You’re going to pick which review you want to insert.  Then you can rate them on the criteria you specified.  You can change the ratings as you see fit.  For me, this works great because web hosting companies are always changing. Sometimes I either lower and raise how I rate different companies as they change over the years.

Enter in your pros and cons (if you are using them on your template).

Add a review image.  Best size is 362 X 320 px.

You can disable user ratings by clicking on the box next to it.

Then you can cut and paste the shortcode and put it anywhere you want it on your pages or post.  Make sure you click save and then check out your changes.

Using Widget

Adding Reviewer in as a widget is very easy.  To do this, you’re going to want to go to your widgets in WordPress.  Then simply drag the Reviewer Widget to wherever you want it.  Specify which template you want to use (by clicking the box).  Then you can either display latest reviews, top score reviews, top rated reviews, top user score reviews, combo 1 | author score + User Score.  Specify how many you want to show up.  You can then change the HEX color if it doesn’t look correct.  Then click save.

Summary

I have been using this plugin for about two months now and have to say it’s pretty easy to use.  It works with the latest version of WordPress (4.1).  I haven’t noticed any conflicts with any plugins I currently have installed on my website.  It does everything I need it to do at tbwhs.com.  The support that you get from this plugin is fantastic.  It comes with a 12 page PDF documentation that shows you how to do anything you might want to do with this plugin.  However, as mentioned above you will get one on one support from Michele Ivani, the developer of the plugin.  It’s updated every month or so.  You can trust that it will work with the latest versions of WordPress.  The best part is it doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars like a lot of other WordPress plugins I have seen.  In fact, you can get it at Code Canyon for $26!  If you’re looking for a rating plugin that is light weight but has tons of features, I would highly recommend you check out Reviewer.  I give it five out five stars, no pun intended.