Extension: pivote - article rating system

[Wim]

Extension Name: pivote v1.100
Extension Author: Wim Bekkers
Download Location: link to Pivote on extensions.pivotx

Extension Description

PIVOTE is an article rating or voting system, with a user friendly interface using Ajax technology. When properly integrated, it will allow readers to rate articles and pages on Pivot weblogs. It will show the average rating on a scale of 1 - 10 (adjustable) for each article, and readers can vote by clicking on the picture which will immediately refresh the Pivote output with the new rating.

Pivote also include tools to create versatile overviews (lists) of highest rated articles or pages anywhere within your PivotX weblog.

Pivote is based on Votio, a rating plugin for Wordpress.

You can see this in action on my website.


Examples of how this may look on your weblog (you can fully customize this):

Scale 1-10 with bars (my favorite)
Scale 1-5 with stars (original votio appearance)

Installation

Step 1: Unpack the zip file in the pivotx/extensions/ directory on your server
Step 2: in the PivotX admin menu go to the Extensions section and enable the pivote extension
Step 3: add the [[pivote]] tag in your template(s) where you want the rating box to appear (associated with each entry on that page)
Step 4 (optional): add the [[pivotetop]] tag in your template where you want a listing of articles with their average rating, or use the pivote_top widget by moving it from the list of available widgets to the active widgets section (in the Extensions -> Widgets section in the PivotX admin menu)

Customization

If you are happy with the way it looks now, then you're done! But you can tweak the output of the pivote rating box and the pivote listing to your likings. You can do this from the PivotX dashboard, look for the Configure Extensions option and select the pivote screen.

This is how it looks like on your PivotX dashboard and will give you an idea of the customization options.

Advanced Customization (not for the faint of heart)

Skip this if you are happy with the way the standard pivote rating box looks on your screen!

But... you can customize the appearance of pivote limitless. Just a couple of hints on what you need to look for.

1. in the pivotx/extensions/pivote/pivote-gfx there is a pivote_conf.php file that points to the images used in the rating box and the maximum vote possible. You can edit this and put your own images in. Hint: if you change max_vote then you want to delete the database file at pivotx/db/pivote as well.

2. similar there is a css file in the pivotx/extensions/pivote/pivote-gfx directory that you can customize. You can save your own copy with its own name and update the corresponding field in de pivote configuration to point to the new file.

To help you a little bit: there is a pivote_conf-5stars.php that contains the information to display the old style votio rating box (with 5 stars).

That was it folks. Please give this one a try and give some feedback here in the forum.

[dgerards]

Sounds great, I'll give it a try

*edit* works great too! thx a lot, I've now added this extension to http://www.tdrt.dk/

thx
Dimitry

[Wim]

Very good, Dimitri. It makes me happy that people are actually using this extension.

[ankedesign]

Hi Wim, thanks for the ratingsystem. Used it in two sites yet, including customizing the starrrating. Very Nice!
Two minor remarks, though;

- The Star-version does have a lot of styling around it. I can imagine people wanting a version that is pretty clean, so easier to implement neatly within a lay-out. But that's just a personal matter of taste.

- The pivot_conf-5stars.php and pivot_conf both use short-open php tags.

Code: Select all

<?

instead of

Code: Select all

<?php

This causes the images to be invisible when the htaccess does not allow the short-open tags. (as mine did.. )

What I do like a lot about pivote is that is gives a textual feedback on the visitors. This makes it very clear.
Thanks again!

[Wim]

- The Star-version does have a lot of styling around it. I can imagine people wanting a version that is pretty clean, so easier to implement neatly within a lay-out. But that's just a personal matter of taste.

Not sure if I can do much about this. I did some trickery to make it easier to customize the rating box from the pivotx dashboard. I may have a look if I can do this in a more structured way.

- The pivot_conf-5stars.php and pivot_conf both use short-open php tags.

Code: Select all

<?

instead of

Code: Select all

<?php

This causes the images to be invisible when the htaccess does not allow the short-open tags. (as mine did.. )

Oops, this is a clear mistake obviously. Need to correct this in the next maintenance release. Thanks for noticing this!

What I do like a lot about pivote is that is gives a textual feedback on the visitors. This makes it very clear.
Thanks again!

Great!

[ankedesign]

Hi Wim,
With the update to the pivotx RC, pivote is experiencing some problems. It doesn't seem to find the images, and shows invalid paths to everything.

what's happening: The fixed paths in the code are pointing to /pivot/yadayada instead of /pivotx/yadayada . Starting from the RC, the pivot folder will always be /pivotx, so fixing the paths solved the problem. You might want to update pivote to match the RC paths.

Also, and this is also a request from Bob, is it necessary to have pivote copy all of its contents to the db folder? We think it should work equally well when running from the extensionsfolder only, and it's way easier to tweak that way. Could this be changed?

Final: take a look at the http://themes.pivotx.net ! Where we used the pivote to rate the themes! It looks really good there we think, happy to use it!

Thanks!

[newsflash2000]

Well, I like this extension, but I only get this when I add the [[ pivote ]] tag to a new entry.

12345678910
0 rating from 0 votes

Is it me or doesn't pivote work in entries? Which I don't think is the case here because it's also happening on another part of my weblog.

EDIT: I guess the author of the post above meant the same thing? If so, sorry for reporting this issue once more.

[Wim]

Well, I like this extension, but I only get this when I add the [[ pivote ]] tag to a new entry.

12345678910
0 rating from 0 votes

Is it me or doesn't pivote work in entries? Which I don't think is the case here because it's also happening on another part of my weblog.

EDIT: I guess the author of the post above meant the same thing? If so, sorry for reporting this issue once more.

Pivote is not ready yet for the latest pivotx RC version. I know what needs to be changed (minor changes) but did not have the time yet to make it consistent with the new extension types in pivotx (i.e. widget vs. snippet vs. hook). Will post an update here when ready.

[newsflash2000]

Okay. I'll keep an eye out for the new version then, because I can't wait to use this extension

[newsflash2000]

Is there any word on a working PivotX 2.0 version of this extension?