Rating
The Rating Module allows your users to rate and review weblog entries. You can create custom rating and review fields. Numerical ratings can be counted, totaled and averaged. Weblog entries can be ranked by various rating fields or by their cumulative averages. Text based fields can collect a wide range of data including detailed reviews.
It is possible, for advanced users, to create rating systems with multiple rating criteria. For example, you can use the module to create a rating system for restaurants where you collect ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 for quality of food, service, ambience, price, location, &c. All of these fields can be totaled and averaged separately as well as totaled and averaged cumulatively.
Additionally, the module can be used to collect different rating sets. You may have a travel website with a list of hotels. A hotel might have one rating form for its food and restaurants, then a different rating form for it's resort facilities and yet another form for its casino amenities. All of these different vectors can be captured by separating the ratings and reviews into different forms. Each rating form is differentiated separately in the database and has statistics collected specific to it.
Weblog entries can be ranked according to their overall scores as well as filtered by categories, statuses, &c.
The module has been optimized for performance and flexibility. When stats are presented on a page for a list of blog entries, no math is executed. Rather, all of the math is front-loaded. When a new rating is submitted for a blog entry, all of the relevant statistics for that blog entry are recalculated and saved in the database.
Included in the module is a simple way of managing multiple themes so that you can control graphical representations of rating stats.
Fractional statistics can be returned as well as whole integers if desired.
The statistics functionality integrates in a flexible manner in EE templates. Rather than folding the statistics calls into the weblog:entries module, you instead call the statistics functions inside of a weblog:entries loop. Simply pass the entry id to the function and format your stats output.
This module package includes two extensions. The first, parse_rating_stats, is essential. It recalculates rating stats every time a blog post is created or edited. The second, rating_order, allows you to sort weblog:entries data by overall average rating. This second extensions requires that you add an extension hook to the weblog module. It's for advanced users.
Using EE as a content management system or web development platform along with the Rating module, you can create robust sites rich with user contributions and ranked content.