simple-review.com

Version 2.1.1 of the component and modules have been released; an upgrade is also available for 2.1.0 users.

Notable changes:

• Works with PHP 4.
• Reviews now have a name field. This will be used in the page title and as the displayed text in the top and latest modules.

If you are upgrading from 2.0.7 you will need to perform the database upgrade from patch 2.0.7 to 2.1.0 first, then you can apply the full 2.1.0 to 2.1.1 patch (file and database).
If you are upgrading make sure you backup your files and database first. Once upgraded make sure your review created dates are correct and check that each review has a sensible name (new field).

Full list of changes:

• Added ‘Name’ to review which will be used in the page’s title and by the top modules.
• Added strings to languages files Review_Module.php (FormName, FormNameTip).
• Added new CSS classes to the review rating boxes.
• Added a default timestamp to the review dates as in somecases without it ‘on update CURRENT_TIMESTAMP’ was being applied.
• Changed category name and description to be a database text field rather than varchar(255).
• Changed review image URLs to be a database text field rather than varchar(255).
• Fixed the comment email link.
• Fixed issues with PHP 4.
• Fixed superfluous spaces in review character filter.
• Fixed Tag table not being deleted.
• Fixed Admin Pagination.
• Fixed Comment form float clearing.
• Fixed review form text inputs being too small.
• Fixed review title quote escaping while editing .
• Removed Category configuaration options (now done via templates in ‘www\administrator\components\com_simple_review\admin\addons\modules\Category_Module\templates\Front\’):
  • Show Title 1
  • Show Title 2
  • Show Title 3
  • Show Rating
  • Show Reviewer
  • Show Date
  • Title 2 is External Url
  • Title 3 is External Url
  • Title 2 is Review Link
  • Title 3 is Review Link

There are a few issues in PHP 4 which will causes errors such as:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in
I am working on a fix at the moment. PHP 5 is fine.

Joomla 1.5 only. Joomla 1.0 is no longer supported.

The upgrade was released last week but since the site was down I have been unable to post about it here … until now.
You can download it here, but there are important and possibly breaking changes so continue reading on before attempting an upgrade.

-=Important Notes=-

1. Backup your Joomla site and Database (important!)
2. The old links to your Simple Review categories and reviews will NO LONGER be valid.

Instead a page will be displayed informing visitors of the new link.
You can change it to automatically redirect users by editing the file:
files\frontend\controller.php
and changing line 87 to:

if(SimpleReviewController::_displayLegacy($addonManager, true))

However if you make this change and in your Joomla settings Search Engine Friendly URLs is turned off the Urls may become escpaed e.g. & turns into &

Example old URLs (with Search Engine Friendly URLs turned off) :
http://mysite/joomla/joomla1.5.blank/index.php?option=com_simple_review&Itemid=54&review=1-t1-t2-t2

http://mysite/joomla/joomla1.5.blank/index.php?option=com_simple_review&Itemid=54&category=2-Test-Category

Will change to:
http://mysite/index.php?view=review&cat=2-test-category&rev=1-t1&option=com_simple_review&Itemid=54

http://mysite/index.php?view=category&cat=2-Test+Category&option=com_simple_review&Itemid=54

If you have Search Engine Friendly URLs turned on they will change to:
http://mysite/reviews/2-test-category/1-t1

http://mysite/reviews/2-Test%20Category

IMPORTANT:
The URL redirection assumes that you are using the default URL configuration i.e.:
index.php?option=com_simple_review&Itemid={sr_itemID}&category={sr_categoryID}-{sr_catName}

index.php?option=com_simple_review&Itemid={sr_itemID}&review={sr_reviewID}-{sr_titles}

If you are comfortable with editing your .htacess file and I would recommend doing a 301 redirect via mod_rewrite instead:
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

-=Upgrade Steps=-

1. Backup your Joomla site and Database (important!)
2. Run the following SQL script to update your database database\upgrade_2.0.7-2.1.0.sql.txt
3. On your Joomla site delete the CONTENTS of www\administrator\components\com_simple_review
   and replace it with files\admin
4. On your Joomla site delete the CONTENTS of www\components\com_simple_review
   and replace it with files\frontend
5. Any questions/problems please post at http://simple-review.com/forum

The site’s server encountered a serious hardware problem and is now back after being down for four days. Unfortunately it has only been restored back to the 15th of November, so any posts in the forum since then will have been lost, sorry

Version 2.1.0 of the Simple Review component and modules has been released. There have been numerous fixes and small features added (most of which have been covered in beta releases), of course the main point is that it now runs natively on Joomla 1.5. I have included a German translation in the main release (look out for translation instructions soon).
If you find any problems please post them in the forum.
Download here.

An upgrade path for existing users will be made available in the next few days.

Version 2.1 will be out very soon. I have decided that shipping was a feature I needed, so I have decided to get the Joomla 1.5 version out ASAP as it is long overdue. This of course means some new features that I really wanted will have to be dropped. As soon as I tidy up the category listing code (it has nearly halved) and do some serious testing I will release it.

In other news I also now have an amazon wish list, some items are helpful to the development of Simple Review … some not so helpful.

Beta 2 has quickly released to fix a bug in Beta 1.

Changes:

• Fixed configuration layout in Internet Explorer.
• Fixed error after saving configuration.
• If a review has a type or Link or Rating it will be rendered as a link or star rating (if star ratings are on) when using {sr_title1},..,{sr_titleN}.

Known Issues:

• The review titles are not rendered on the category page.
• When Single Category Bypass is on ‘Top N’ do not get displayed.

Simple Review 2.1 Beta 1 has been released. It fixes the majority of the issues in the alpha releases and add new features.

• Review blurb can be greater than 400 characters.
• Can no longer submit a review with the rating greater than the max allowed rating.
• Pass by reference PHP error in Addon_Base.php.
• Can no longer add a category with the parent category set to itself.
• Titles now have a types Link, Rating and Text.
• Titles can now be marked as mandatory.
• jQuery is now a requirement (currently included via google).
• Categories have a new field ‘Page Name’ which can be used in the Url, it can contain non-ascii characters but this is not recommend as they will be Url encoded.
• Fixed bug where you could not create categories if legacy mode was enabled.
• Joomla 1.0.X is no longer supported.
• Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported.

Known Issues:

• The configuration page layout is ‘messed’ up in Internet Explorer, please use Firefox or Chrome if it bothers you.
• When Single Category Bypass is on ‘Top N’ do not get displayed.

Work on 2.1 is going well and hope to have a beta out early September and then a final out October.

I recently added a new tag call Page Name which should be used as the URL to the review (or category) instead of the review titles. I was previously restricting it to numbers, the English alphabet and hyphens, I have removed this limitation and you can now use items from the UTF character set. For example a link to your URL could now look like this:

sardless.com/reviews/18-Characters-From-Your-Language.html (sorry I cannot seem to get foreign e.g. Japanese characters to work in this post so use your imagination)

However the caveat is that since the URL gets encoded Internet Explorer (even version 8.0) will still show the encoded text in the status and URL bar, Firefox and Chrome however will (correctly) decode the URL and display it in its native language. For the previous reason and others such as people who can’t type in your language cannot manually enter the URL I would recommend sticking to the English alphabet.

At the moment I am thinking about dropping support for Joomla 1.0.X and Internet Explorer 6 … we shall see.

Simple Review 2.1 Alpha 2 has been released. You can download it from here, make sure you download com_simple_review_2.1.0_alpha2_joomla1.5.zip.

Changes:

• Languages have been cleaned up and moved into:
  www\administrator\components\com_simple_review\
  addons\modules\Language_Module\languages\
  Note that at the moment the language cannot be changed from en-GB, you are free to modify en-GB to test.
• The category layout has been moved into a separate file:
  www\administrator\components\com_simple_review\
  addons\modules\Category_Module\templates\Default
  Note that at the moment the template cannot be changed from Default, you are free to modify Default to test.
• Works on PHP 4
• Created By and Last Modified By are now being saved (broken in Alpha 1)
• {sr_categoryID} tag now works
• Can now submit a comment with rating 0
• Non-ASCII titles in URLs are now handled correctly i.e. non-ASCII character removed, temporary solution a new field will be added for the Url.
• The administration review listing now has a category filter.
• Provide alternating star image in review listing.

You can see a list of known issues here, please also post any new issues you may find.