Installation Instructions

1. After download the plug in, you can upload and install it from Wordpress Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New. Alternatively, you can unpack and upload the dir with files to the wp-content/plugins folder on your blog.

2. Activate the plugin.

3. You can configure the options under Setting -> Comment Rating. The default options should be good enough. It works out of box. You are done. Sit back and have a look at your blog.

4. If you want to tailor the display format further, you can turn off auto-insertion into comments and add the following line to an appropriate place in your theme "comments.php" file within the comment loop. if(function_exists(ckrating_display_karma)) { ckrating_display_karma(); }

More about custom installation in the Comment Rating plugin FAQ.

FAQ

For complete and most up-to-date FAQ, please see Comment Rating plugin FAQ.

• Why are the voting image in gray?

If the thumbs are grey, it's most likely working well. Comment author cannot vote on his/her own comments. That's why the voting images are grayed out and don't respond to mouse-over. But if you change to a different IP address, you'll be able to see the clickable images and mouse-over effects.

If all your computers go through the same ADSL/Cable router, they all have the same external IP address. The thumb will stay gray, until your IP address changes (e.g. rebooting the router).

To others, the thumbs should be in color.

• Can I style the whole comment box of highly-rated/poorly-rated/hotly-debated comments

Yes. the comment styling uses the new comment_class filter (introduced in WordPress 2.7). If your theme doesn't use WordPress 2.7 wp_list_comments(), you'll only see the comment text background being styled or highlighted. To fix the problem, you need to add comment_class into your existing theme. For example code, please see here.

• My nested comment box highlighting is messed up!

When using nested comments, the styling of a highly or poorly-rated comment is passed on to every comment below it. This means that every comment nested below a low-rated comment becomes semi-opaque, even if it is high-rated itself. The end result is huge blocks of dim text that are difficult to read.

Also highly-rated comments pass on that style to everything below it, resulting in huge blocks of styled text that obscure the rating of comments that are not really highly rated.

The problem is caused by styling the whole comment box. To solve the problem, just turn off comment box styling.

• How do I set the thresholds of highly-rated/poorly-rated/hotly-debated comments?

This is the tricky part. Setting the thresholds too low, every comment becomes highlighted or hidden. Setting them too high, nothing changes and you cannot draw readers attention.

Every blog's readers are different. Some have passionate and active readers who vote on almost every comment. Some have indifferent readers who don't want to click.

There's no magic formula. You'll have to experiment. Hopefully, it's fun to play with the numbers.

• Can a comment be both highly-rated, and poorly-rated or hotly-debated?

Yes, if you're not careful with your thresholds. Won't there be messy formatting? No, there won't be. Rest assured. Comment Rating will use only one style based on the following descending priorities: highly-rated, poorly-rated, hotly-debated.

• Can I style the whole comment box of highly-rated/poorly-rated/hotly-debated comments

Yes. the comment styling uses the new comment_class filter (introduced in WordPress 2.7). If your theme doesn't use WordPress 2.7 wp_list_comments(), you'll only see the comment text background being styled or highlighted. To fix the problem, you need to add comment_class into your existing theme. For example code, please see here.

Changelog

2.9.32

Belorrusian translation by Itransition

2.9.31

Hebrew translation by TechHead

2.9.30

Hooks voting into wordpress's global action system and uses a predefined wordpress core action for comment changes. This enables caching plugins, such as W3 Total Cache, can react to comment changes. Thanks Jason Donenfeld for providing the patch.

2.9.29

It took me a while to upgrade from PHP 5.1.6 to PHP 5.3.2 and install WordPress 3.2.1. Now Comment Rating is tested on WP 3.2.1, again still works like a charm.

2.9.28

Tested on WP 3.1.3. Still works like a charm

2.9.27

de_DE translation by Professional Translation

2.9.26

pt_BR translation by frq.

2.9.25

Support IP based fraud detection for servers behind a reverse proxy. Thank to Marc Gortz from the German online marketing agency klickfreundlich.

2.9.24

Urgent update: fix a loophole which allows potential SQL Injection attack

2.9.22

Tested on 3.0.4 and add explanations.

2.9.21

Added CSRF attack protection. Thanks krebsonsecurity.com for reporting the problem and providing part of the solution.

2.9.20

Tested in WP 3.0.2

2.9.19

Polish translation by Tinydirect

2.9.18

More screen shots

2.9.17

Update feature descriptions and screen shots

2.9.15

Tested on Wordpress 3.0. Everything is fine.

2.9.14

Albanian translation by WPAlb.com

2.9.13

Tested on Wordpress 2.9.2. Still works like a charm.

2.9.12

Fix the bug that text are displayed in different line, due to specifics in certain themes, e.g. Suffusion.

2.9.11

Add "margin: 0px;" to image style. This should prevent voting icons and vote numbers being in separate lines.

2.9.10

Tested under Wordpress 2.9 and 2.9.1. All working well.

2.9.9

Set filter priority to 9000. Late enough to avoid most conflicts, early enough to avoid conflicting with WP Threaded Comment

2.9.8

Cannot run Comment Rating as the last filter. This conflicts with WP Threaded Comment plugin. Weighing the evil, now we are now in conflict with Kaskus Emoticons plugin.

2.9.7

Add choice to tooltips for "Thumb up" or "Thumb down", contributed by Eric Peterka.

2.9.6

• Make sure Comment Rating is the last filter to run. This avoids conflicts with Kaskus Emoticons plugin.
• Fix the duplicated image id causing problem with Comment Rating Widget

2.9.5

Remove browser not supporting XMLHttpRequest object. It doesn't help ordinary user.

2.9.4

There's no point of silencing your own voice on your blog. When readers mark a comment by the blog author or admin as poorly rated, the comment will not be hidden, but only marked as poorly rated.

2.9.3

Fix the multiple alert message when the voting icons are double clicked.

2.9.2

Tested on Wordpress 2.8.6. Added non-breakable space between voting images and numbers

2.9.1

Belorussian translation by FatCow

2.9.0

Added function to enable widget (Comment Rating Widget plugin) to display the ratings along with recent comments.

2.8.6

Fixed the bug when auto-insert is turned off, highlighting won't have any effect

2.8.5

Fixed a bug in Spanish translation.

2.8.4

French translation by Charlie Borghini.

2.8.3

Tested on WordPress 2.8.5

2.8.2

• Store votes in wp_comments table comment_karma field. Stored votes can be: positive only, negative only or combined.
• Add database access caching, improve efficiency.
• Fix the known bug that, If you enable Comment Rating, disable it and then enable it again, the comments were made during the disabling period will not have any database record and won't show any rating images.

2.8.1

Fix a Javascript bug when choosing Likes-only or Dislikes-only.

2.8.0

Allow vote type of: positive only, negative only votes or both.

2.7.8

Arabic Yemen translation by Thamood Binmahfooz

2.7.7

• Add options for mouseover effect
• Spanish translation by David Basulto.

2.7.6

Fix missing closing tag in hidden comments.

2.7.5

• Add youtub style voting images.
• Fix the hidden comment not displayed bug, introduced in version 2.7.4

2.7.4

• Add option to turn off inline style sheet and javascript loading. This helps power users to customize their theme efficiently.

• Bulgarian translation by ITWS.

2.7.2

NL translation by iPhoneclub.nl.

2.7.1

• Added localization capability.
• Please help out with translation.

2.7.0

• Add hotly-debated highlighting.
• Add option to turn off comment box, to avoid messy styling for nested comments.
• Wording before the image now changes with the rating of the comment.
• Made all javascript function/var name unique.
• Fix the get_bloginfo('wpurl') bug.
• Fix an incompatibility with WP Super Cache.

2.6.1

• 2.6.0 turns out to be rather stable.
• Add thumb image titles.

2.6.0

• Allow display of 1, 2 or both voting numbers.
• Add styling of the numbers.
• Add mouseover effect to images
• Add choice of images.
• Add choice of image size

2.5.2

• Turn off duplicated vote error message. Duplicated votes are skipped in counting.
• Add an empty space between vote number and image.

2.5.1

Fix javascript loading problem in admin pages.

2.5.0

• Add option to choose one number or two.
• Use checkmark to indicate voting success.

2.4.6

Fix a bug that caused non-valide XHTML.

2.4.4

• Add "!important" to default styling to avoid being overriden.
• Change option page layout. change highly/poorly rated criteria.

2.4.2

Enhance the highly-rated comment styling to the entire comment box.

2.4.1

• Change default threshholds on highlight good comments and hide poor comments.

• Fixing the bug: when auto-insert is turned off, comment highlighting and hiding are missing too.

2.4.0

Adding styling to highly-rated comments.

2.3.3

Correct image alt text. Remove mentioning of IP address in error message.

2.3.2

• Fix a bug for rating threshhold.
• Add fine-tuned control to turn off rating for admin/author's comments.

2.3

Comments disliked too much by readers will be hidden in a click-to-show link.

2.2

Add flexibility with an option page.

2.1

Add auto-insertion rating images into comments, and javascript to footer

2.0

• Change the vote counter from 1 (total) to 2 (Likes and Dislikes) and display them separately.
• Added index to vote count table. Improved the plug-in performance