Just before heading out to Blog World Expo a few weeks ago, I found a really cool little WordPress Plugin software which helps you to integrate review capabilities into WordPress.

Firstly, what in the world are “Review Capabilities” and why do we care about them?

Well, when you’re building a Blog, one of the fundamental benefits of building a Blog compared to other types of websites is audience interaction.  Using this Blog as an example, one of the things that makes this Blog successful is the comments and feedback I receive from my regular readers.  Everyone who contributes to my Blog by leaving comments is helping to make this Blog even more successful.

It’s important to understand this fundamental point – Interaction with your readers, helps to make a Blog Successful.  So, what this software does is that it actually allows you to integrate a more interesting way to interact with your readers.  In fact, what it really does is that it allows you to quantify the opinions of your readers in certain circumstances, for a certain purpose.

Essentially, it gives you the option to allow your readers to rate certain things on your Blog.  What can your readers rate?  Well, the plugin is flexible enough to allow you to rate anything you want based on whatever criteria you want.

Probably a much better way to explain what I’m talking about is to show you an example website I’ve put together to test the capabilities of this plugin.  The website is called Law of Attraction Reviews.  Essentially it’s a website that is going to have a whole bunch of Law of Attraction related products and it’s going to review them based on certain criteria.

In this example, I’ve got a review of the book “The Science of Getting Rich”.  All I do is create a blog post with that title, and the software tracks the ratings for that post.  In this example I’ve got 1 Review for the book and I’ve given it 5 stars for each criteria.

The criteria I created are “Overall Rating“, “Value for Money“, “Unique Content” etc. but you are free to create your own criteria for whatever type of product or service you are going to review on the site.  So, for example if you were to start a video game review site, perhaps the criteria might include “Graphics“, “Sound” etc.  The software is flexible enough to allow you to create whichever criteria you want to rate your items.

Now, the next thing we need to understand is exactly how do people rate these items?  Well, the plugin very simply just integrates with the standard WordPress commenting system.  The end result looks like this:

As you can see, the interface is integrated with the standard WordPress comment box.  The user simply writes their review in the standard comment box, and then the user simply selects the number of stars for each criteria the item is being reviewed for.  Once the user submits their review, the system then calculates the average rating for each item (“Overall Rating“, “Value for Money” etc.)

Customizable Look

So far I’ve only experimented with the standard theme that came with the plugin, but the software is written in a way that you can fully customize how it looks and how it integrates with your Blog theme through the use of CSS style sheets.

Weighted Average

The software includes an algorithm that will optionally sort your post by a weighted average.  What does this mean?  Well, lets say that you have an item that has received 100 reviews and they have mostly been 4/5 stars.  A lot of reviews had 5/5 stars for the item but there were a few that had 3/5 stars or 4/5 stars as well.  Basically the item is a solid product that is highly recommended and with the positive reviews it appears at the top of your list.

Now, lets say you add another item to the mix and the very first review gives it 5/5 stars.  Without a weighted average algorithm, this new item would take top spot because it’s 5/5 stars, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the better item, it simply means the ONE person who reviewed it liked it.  Using a weighted average, the software will rank an item with more reviews higher than a product with just a few positive reviews.

Integrates with WordPress Admin

The software integrates with the standard WordPress Administration panel and the comment section to give you full flexibility to see the reviews (comments) and the ranks people are giving products.  This allows you to filter out any kind of SPAM reviews just like you would filter out SPAM comments on a Blog.

Who is the WP Review Site For?

The WP Review Site plugin is a piece of software you would purchase if you are looking to expand the capabilities of your Blog.  Meaning, the reason you would buy the plugin is because you want to have an easy to use, fully WordPress integrated way to allow your Blog users to vote on certain types of content on your Blog.

The plugin can be integrated into your Posts or Pages on your Blog.  You can utilize the voting system on all your Blog posts, such as in the case of a “Review Blog”, or you can pick and choose only specific Blog posts to have this capability.

How Much Does it Cost?

The WP Review Site 2.0 software normally retails for $199.95, but the author is currently selling it at an introductory price of $97. I’m not sure how long this introductory price will last, but if you’ve been looking for a way to improve the user experience on your Blog and you’d like to try adding in the ability for your users to “Review” or offer “Ratings” on things on your Blog, you might want to check it out.

Click Here to Visit WP Review Site 2.0.