After a day with ReviewPost…

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Below are what I posted at Simple Machines forum, I think it would be useful for my future reference as well as to my visitors, so I copy and paste it here to share with you guys. 🙂

This article is all about having a review system on your website, here’s how it is in action:

http://pentaxworld.com/reviews/

http://pentaxreview.com

I searched for ReviewPost in the forum (SMF) and nothing much comes up. So I thought perhaps I can comment something on the software and the integration with SMF1.1.2.

I was a bit reluctant of spending US$99 for a software that I am not sure of. After searching SMF for no or little use results…I google for it for more information.

I found out that there are MANY people using ReviewPost actually, and a very famous photography website that I know of is using ReviewPost as well (they have paid to remove the brand/copyright). So, with that I took the risk and ordered for my ReviewPost on last Friday night.

I received no download link of ReviewPost after waiting till Saturday noon. I decided to drop them an email and within 10 mins I got a reply saying that they have already emailed me the link to download the software 10 hours ago, and it might have been in my spam folder. Nevermind, they sent me a new link and username/login, and immediately I download, upload it to my server and installed it on my website.

Installation is pretty easy and straight forward. If you can install SMF manually, then you should not have problem installing ReviewPost.

Now, how about integration with SMF? ReviewPost is heavily made for vBulletin. You can see features in ReviewPost specifically for vB. Luckily, SMF is supported as well, from version 1.05 and above. During the installation, just read the lines carefully and select SMF as the the user database. You will need to provide your SMF database login info during the installation.

After setting everything up in about 15 mins, I can start running ReviewPost. However, login/logout seems to have some issue. I checked and it is the Cookies setting.

There are setting for Cookies in ReviewPost. You need to set the correct SMF Cookies (SMFCookie463) and also specify that ReviewPost is using the same cookies as well.

Then login/logout should be working fine.

However, I notice that the login page seems to have problem. I have some errors (4 warning lines) on the login page at ReviewPost:

• Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/pentaxkk/public_html/reviews/pp-inc.php on line 3253
• Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/pentaxkk/public_html/reviews/pp-inc.php on line 3256
• Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/pentaxkk/public_html/reviews/forums/smf.php on line 359
• Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/pentaxkk/public_html/reviews/forums/smf.php on line 362

and the login page is not showing the default theme properly. 🙁

I have dropped them a support request in ReviewPost forum, hopefully they will answer it soon. I suspect it to be some integration conflict with SMF 1.1.2 or mySQL version issue. Still, users can still login without problem.

Talking about theme integration, this is the best part! If you already have a specific theme for your SMF and want to use it for ReviewPost, just select to use SMF forum theme, and viola! Your ReviewPost is having the EXACT same theme as your forum within seconds! 😀

Wrote too much, here’s my PentaxReview site:

http://pentaxworld.com/reviews/

http://pentaxreview.com

There is a Header and Footer pages for you to add a html header and footer to your Reviews website in the admin of ReviewPost. Very simply, just design and copy and paste the html codes from your frontpage or any html editor.

(I am thinking of whether to install this review system to PhotoMalaysia or not…which means spending another US$99 for the license fee. At PentaxWorld, I received enough donation for the software, but for PhotoMalaysia, the money I spent on annual server rental (US$1.5k) has still not yet come back… :'()