Use the coupon code ‘v2release’ to get 20% off for a limited time.

A few years ago, I never would have imagined all the possible uses for Wordpress we have today. Turning Wordpress into a review site is just one of the new popular uses for everyone’s favorite CMS. The easiest way to do this is with the help of a plugin. Just recently, 2 review plugins for Wordpress have gained some popularity over at Wickedfire; WPReviewEngine and WFReview.

I’ve used WFReview for a handful of my Wordpress based already, and I’ve got to say, I love it! But it would be dumb of me to ignore other options. When the developer of WPReviewEngine created a sales thread on Wickedfire, I figured I’d give it a try. I promised the developer a review many months ago, but wasn’t able to get to it. But I’m happy I didn’t, because just a month ago version 2.0 was released with many features that I find essential for such a plugin.

Important Features

• Add ratings via comments – Essential for user interaction.
• Editor ratings – For affiliate reviews and product reviews in general.
• Custom fields – Required for displaying additional info in posts, and and easy way to add thumbnails into many themes.
• Comparison tables – Largly a feature geared towards landing pages.
• Google Maps Integration – If building a local directory you can not live without this feature.
• Automatically Generated Comments – Great way to make your site look busy and add some credibility to your reviews.
• Import Data from CSV – If you aren’t using review plugins to generate insane amounts of content, you should be, and you’ll need this.
• Sidebar Widgets – If you could just use code to display top rated posts, I’d prefer that, but these graphical widgets are cool too.
• Link Cloaking – There used to be a bunch of plugins for coaking mass links with Wordpress

There are some other features mentioned on WPReviewEngine but they aren’t worth mentioning or are (what should be) standard features.

Advantages

Right off the bat, I get the impressions WPReviewEngine was designed for products rather than directories. This is by no means a bad thing. Comparison tables, widgets, editor ratings, and of course, comment ratings are all important features for a product review site.

Unless you want to spend weeks entering data, or paying someone else to, you better make use to the CSV Import feature. I just imported over 1000 records and now have a full fledged site loaded with content. You can go one step further and generate comments for your posts as well.

What really sets WPReviewEngine apart from the rest is the comment templates feature, making it possible to generate unique, readable, comments on the fly.

Here is the comments generation page. Towards the top you can see how the comment templates work, as well as other auto-gen comment settings.

A good Wordpress Plugin will work with little to no modifcations by the user, and HBZSoftware has done just that. Beyond editing basic settings via the control panel, WPReviewEngine is ready to go right out of the box.

Disadvantages

Although WPReviewEngine does get the job done, there was one lack of a feature that really got to me, sub-category support. WFReview allows you to use data in your CSV to create subcategories, as well as parent categories.

Lastly, WPReviewEngine has a serious lack of documentation. One of the things I really like about WFReview are the support forums. If I have a problem or question I typically get it answered within 24 hours. WPReviewEngine on the other hand does not have a support forum as far as I know. The developer does offer his assistance directly, however. The support page reads:

I will provide assistance to those wishing to integrate WPReivewEngine with a custom WordPress theme using the API instead of the auto-embed feature, or those wishing to modify the internal WPReviewEngine code. I won’t write the code for you, but I’m happy to explain where things are, how they work, and what changes would be necessary to achieve the desired reult.

I haven’t personally requested support so I don’t know how good it is, but I imagine its good based on my minimal experiance thus far. Luckily WP Review Engine is easy to use, even for the Wordpress novice.

Demo: WPReviewEngine Demo | Local Directory Demo
Download: Single License – $79.95 USD | Unlimited License – $149.95

Use the coupon code ‘v2release’ to get 20% off for a limited time.

He released the plugin earlier this week and I’ve been messing with it the past few days. I bothered Nick at least once a week, asking about the release of the plugin, and it is finally here. So far I’m more than satisified. The plugin isn’t over the top and is easy to integrate. But what I really love about this plugin is the easy content generation. I’m building a bunch of local review sites (hotels, bars, restaurants, etc.). With the help of a scraper and Review Plugin for Wordpress I’ll be able to populate my sites with at least 2000 records at a time, and then randomly generate ratings for each post.

The plugin doesn’t require any code modifications, and this simple implementation allows for easy customization of generated posts.

This plugin will play a vital role in the domination of my local SERPS. In my next post, I’ll explain how I’m using this plugin  and other tools to quickly create a bunch of local content and valuable information for my visitors.

Support

There were a few bugs I had to deal with when I first installed Review Plugin for Wordpress. Nick or Ryan the developer were there to answer all my questions in the forums. They even released a few patches in the few days that the plugin has been available.

Possible Uses

There are many uses for such a plugin. I’ll be using the plugin to review local business for the most part, but there’s far more you can do with it.

Just a few:

• Product Reviews: Music, electronics, books, movies, etc – You could build a review oriented site, or just use it from time to time to add to your own reviews.
• Massive Product Review Creation: If an affiliate program allows you to download a CSV of their product catalog you could easily generate thousands of product focused pages.
• Directories: Local businesses, national, niche service directory – Endless possibilites. With a scraper, these sites can be built really fast.
• Landing Pages: If you’re a fan of review landers, this plugin should be able to speed the process up for you.

What I’d like to see in the future…

Google Maps
I still haven’t found an easy way to add maps to my posts, but I’m sure Ryan or someone else from the forums will come up with a solution soon.

Code Examples
I’d like to see some creatives uses of this plugin. So far I haven’t found a way to display my “top rated [whatevers]” in my sidebar for example. I don’t even know if this is possible yet with this plugin.

Open Source
I’m sure Nick wants to protect his investment, but at this point you have to rely on Nick and Ryan for support and improvements. This isn’t really a big deal since they are quick to respond to support questions, but I could do without the ioncube encoding.

There’s always something like 125×125 ads, horrible coding, bad slicing, or some idiot trying to be innovative by adding a completely useless feature that only confuses visitors, and break the theme if you take it out. Not that I don’t appreciate the open source community, especially the one supporting Wordpress, but damn make more functional themes for God’s sake.

Improvements are on the horizon with the new magazine theme fad, and more flexible and robust themes, but I still find it almost impossible to find a decent theme these days. Maybe I should stop bitching and finally learn how to put a Wordpress theme together. Naw, maybe some other time.

This is a horrible way to do things if you’re trying to utilize the fire and forget mindset. Just get something up. Eventually you will stumble across a theme that you think will work for it.

While the Carrington Blog theme was pretty slick, the whole reason I use Wordpress is because it is easy, and I can manage almost everything from the control panel. Carrington on the other hand had me constantly going back through though dozens of theme files locally. Which is a big pain in the ass. The theme is supposed to be aimed towards developers and I’m sure it really flexible, but this is a personal blog of sorts, and I’m lazy.

So I finally decided to shell out some cash for some premium themes. So I got a license for the cheapest theme club I could find. So far everything looks good, but I’ll probably spend tomorrow messing with it. I think this theme adds a more professional feeling to things, which I think will be good for marketing my services. I’ve also been looking for themes for local projects, and I think at least one of the themes here will do.

In other news…

Obama won the presidential election, and I’m up to 3835 (including this post) for the WebWriMo challenge.

I’ll be posting some semi-useful stuff in the next couple days, which will be aimed towards beginner to intermediate afffiliates, so you guys already banking, don’t expect a whole bunch from me. Though you guys probably don’t waste much time reading such posts anyway.