=== GD Star Rating ===
Contributors: gdragon
Version: 1.8.1
Tags: vote, ratings, cache, integration, post, page, widget, thumb, rating, star, gdragon, ajax, templates, trends, comments, review, multi, wpmu
Requires at least: 2.7
Tested up to: 2.9
Stable tag: trunk

GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up advanced rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog using single, multi and thumbs ratings.

== Description ==
GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings along with thumbs based ratings. Plugin supports use of cache plugins and dynamic loading of data using ajax.

Supported languages: english, serbian, spanish, german, italian, french, ukrainian, belorussian, russian, polish

= About Plugin Support =
Plugin is provided for free, and that is not going to change. But support is not free anymore. Currently available tutorials on official website will remain there, but all new tutorials and much more are available only through premium support on Dev4Press website.
[Reasons for Premium Support](http://www.gdstarrating.com/2009/12/17/why-premium-support/) |
[Support on Dev4Press](http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-star-rating/editions/) |
[Support Policy](http://www.dev4press.com/support-policy/)

= Basic Information =
[Plugin Home](http://www.gdstarrating.com/) |
[Features](http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-star-rating/features/) |
[FAQ](http://www.gdstarrating.com/faq/) |
[Premium Support](http://www.gdstarrating.com/premium/) |
[Twitter](http://twitter.com/milangd)

= Plugin Reference =
[Functions](http://info.dev4press.com/gd-star-rating/functions.html) |
[WP Query](http://info.dev4press.com/gd-star-rating/wpquery.html) |
[Actions & Filters](http://info.dev4press.com/gd-star-rating/filters.html) |
[Database Layout](http://code.google.com/p/gd-star-rating/wiki/DatabaseTablesFormat) |
[Translations](http://info.dev4press.com/gd-star-rating/languages.html)

= Using the Plugin =
[Tutorials](http://www.gdstarrating.com/category/tutorials/) |
[Advanced](http://www.gdstarrating.com/category/tutorials/advanced/) |
[User Guide](http://www.gdstarrating.com/downloads/user-guide/) |
[Issue Tracker](http://tracker.gdstarrating.com/) |
[Forum](http://forum.gdragon.info/viewforum.php?f=9) |
[Source](http://code.google.com/p/gd-star-rating/)

== Configuration ==
Plugin administration consist of 17 main panels:

* Front Page:
  General info about the plugin and links
* My Ratings:
  Current logged user ratings statistics
* Builder:
  Building shortcodes and integration functions
* Articles:
  Votes and ratings for each post and page
* Categories:
  Category based voting rules
* Users:
  Votes organized on user base with IP lookup for each vote
* Multi Sets:
  Main panel for multiple ratings feature
* Settings:
  All options for this plugin are here
* Graphics:
  Settings and preview images for stars, thumbs and trends
* Tools:
  Various tools for cleanup and global updates
* IP:
  Banning IP addresses
* T2 Templates:
  Advananced templates system
* Import:
  Import voting data from other rating plugins
* Export:
  Export rating data and templates to CSV format
* Setup:
  Upgrade and setup options
* Security:
  Access levels and rights used mainly for WPMU

== Installation ==

= Minimal Requirements =
* PHP: 5.x.x
* mySQL: 4.0, 4.1 or 5.x
* WordPress: 2.7 or newer

= Recommended Requirements =
* PHP: 5.2.x or newer
* mySQL: 5.x
* WordPress: 2.8 or newer

= Basic Installation =
* Plugin folder in the WordPress plugins folder must be `gd-star-rating`.
* Upload `gd-star-rating` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
* Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
* Check all the plugin and plugin widgets settings before using the plugin.

= Advanced Installation =
* if you don't change location of `wp-content` folder, then you don't need to make any more changes.
* if your `wp-content` folder is moved out of default WordPress location, then you must edit plugins `config.php` file and set value with exact location of `wp-load.php` file for global constant `STARRATING_WPLOAD` in line 8. Without this most of the features, including saving votes, will not work.

= WordPress MU & BuddyPress =
* Minimal version supported: 2.8.1
* Support for WPMU is only partial, not everything works as it should be.
* Plugin is not working with some BuddyPress specific features.

= Browser Notice =
* Multi review feature on administration Post Edit page will not work properly with IE6 browsers.

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= How to check if there is a sample and already explained solution to my problem? =
Check the post in the following category: http://www.gdstarrating.com/category/tutorials/solving-problems/.

= How to change visibility of plugin menus to different user levels? =
This is controlled by the constants defined in the config files. Detailed info on setting them is here: http://www.gdstarrating.com/2009/08/12/using-config-files/.

= How to insert rating blocks or results directly into the theme files? =
All plugins functions for inserting wherever you want can be found in the info folder included with the plugin, or at this url: http://info.dev4press.com/gd-star-rating/.

= Both stars and thumbs rating block are showing on pages. =
You need to disable auto insertion of the rating type you don't want to use. Both are controlled by the options on the Settings panel. For post/page stars use Posts & Pages tab and 5 auto insert checkboxes, for comments use Comments tab and 3 auto insert checkboxes. To control thumb ratings auto insertion, use Thumbs Up/Down tab, and you save auto insert options for posts and pages, and at the bottom for comments. Disable what you don't want to use.

= How to change the elements displayed by the plugin in widget, rating blocks and other rendering elements? =
All rendering is controlled by the T2 templates system. To change the rendering output you need to make your own templates and change what they display.

= Plugin is not showing rating stars or rating widgets after update, or all stars and thumbs have disappeared, and there is nothing in stars/thumbs selection lists. =
Check all plugin settings and plugins widgets settings after update and save them. If graphics is gone, try rebuilding stars and thumbs sets: go to plugin Tools -> tab Graphics -> Rescan.

= After update I can vote for some posts (stars and/or thumbs). =
Most likely, you have already voted for these posts. Plugin uses database log and cookies to prevent duplicate votes (can be disabled). Update CAN'T break the plugin (well, this is true in 99% of the cases), because tables layout and queries are not changed for a long time. You can't upgrade to latest versions from old releases pre 1.3.0 version.

= I have added one of the plugins widgets, and it's not showing anything. =
Check the widget settings. Most likely problem is with default widget setting to show only posts with 5 votes or more. If you have just set the plugin most likely you still don't have enough votes.

= Instead of ratings, in posts on front and category pages plugin shows something like this: VN:F [1.6.7_924] Rating 0/10 (0 Votes). =
This is not a bug, but a well-known excerpt problem More details on that and the solutions are in this post: http://www.gdstarrating.com/2009/02/13/the-excerpt-problems/.

= Can I use this plugin in combination with cache plugins like WP Super Cache? =
Yes. Plugin supports all cache plugins and can load ratings using ajax to keep them current and to avoid ratings to be cached. To enable this feature, you need to activate it on the plugins Settings panel, tab Features, and option Cache Support. You can use this option even if you don't use cache plugins. Instead of showing ratings with the page, plugin will render loading message that will be replaced with rating block once the page is fully loaded.

= After upgrade plugin is not rendering stars, and only a loading message appears. =
This is caused by the cache plugins support enabled that causes rating block to be loaded after the page is ready. To disable this feature, you need to deactivate it on the plugins Settings panel, tab Features, option Cache Support.

= Plugin is not working in some browsers. =
Plugin is tested in Opera 9, Opera 9.5, Opera 10, Safari 3, Safari 4, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, MS Internet Explorer 6, MS Internet Explorer 7, MS Internet Explorer 8. However, still there is a possibility that plugin fails to work in some browsers because other plugins or theme can contain JavaScript code that can interfere with GD Star Rating. In that case, you need to fix code causing the problems. I will not test how badly written plugins can cause problems.

= After plugin is activated, I get an empty page or 500 Internal Server error. =
In rare cases problem is with the plugin, and it is caused by old PHP version (older than 4.4.0). If this is the problem, you cannot use plugin until you update the PHP. But, in most cases problem is caused by some incompatibiliy with theme or other plugin. If that is the case, than you need to find the error behind the problem.

= Plugin CSS and JavaScript files used for rating are not loaded, and for them server returns internal error. =
This is the problem in case when PHP on the server can't execute these files. Both main JS and CSS are not static files, but dynamic PHP files. The best way to avoid this is to set files and folders permissions properly. All folders should be set to 0755 and all files to 0644. If this doesn't help, contact hosting admin to check what's preventing PHP from accessing this files.

= Stars and/or thumbs are not showing in the rating blocks. =
There could be two causes for this:
* Plugins CSS and JavaScript files are not loaded: Check the previous FAQ answer.
* There are no stars or thumbs set selected for the plugin to use. To check this, go to Graphics panel and you will see if there are any sets there, and if any of them is selected. If there are no sets displayed, you need to rescan for them: panel Tools, tab Graphics, and button Rescan. Once the sets are back, you need to select on the Graphics panel sets and sizes you want to use in the active rating blocks: http://www.gdstarrating.com/2009/05/20/settings-explained-part-5/.

= Rating is not working in Firefox, but is working in other browsers. =
There are many extensions for Firefox that modify the page, and are known to cause many JavaScript problems. Plugin works with all major browsers, and all JavaScript is developed using Firefox and Firebug. But I am not using (nor will test) Firefox with extensions (I use only Firebug).

= I have trouble saving plugin settings? =
This happens only with PHP4. That's why minimal plugin requirements is now PHP5. Upgrade your servers, PHP4 is no longer supported, it's outdated and full of security holes.

= I tried everything (I really tried), and many things are still not working. =
I can't guarantee that plugin will work on every WordPress setup. In 99.9% of the cases there are no problems, but some plugin, theme and server combinations can cause problems that can't be anticipated. But this is very rare, and in most cases that can be corrected by tracking down the problem. And usually only some plugins features will fail. Do not simply give up, find the problem, find the PHP error that can cause problem that will most likely point to some other plugin causing problems.

== Screenshots ==
1. Plugin settings General tab
2. Post And Pages Voting And Rating statistics
3. Templates T2 Editor
4. Shortcode/Functions builder
5. Post that uses shortcode with rating stars
6. Example rating stars
7. Example multi rating block

== Changelog ==
= 1.8.1 =
* Updated several translations
* Override thumbs no votes percentage not used
* Minor WP 2.9 issues with datepicker loading
* Several important fixes and changes

= 1.8.0 MMX =
* Setting for default percentage value
* Rewritten multi editor functions
* Several important fixes and changes

= 1.7.9 =
* Control output for search engine bots
* Few fixes and imporovements

= 1.7.8 =
* Few more tags added into templates
* Several rendering and other minor issues fixed

= 1.7.7 =
* Belorussian translation
* Broken loading of js breaks some admin pages

= 1.7.6 =
* Rewritten taxonomy based calculation
* Improved JS and CSS loading for admin pages, JS moved to footer
* Removed old charts code and dashboard chart widget
* Some warnings and minor bugs fixed

= 1.7.5 =
* Integration function for Google Rich Snippets
* Several more bugs fixed

= 1.7.4 =
* Permanently solved famous excerpt problem
* Fully implemented google rich snippets support
* Controls for google rich snippets integration
* New templates import and export
* Loaders optimizations for main CSS file
* Several more bugs fixed

= 1.7.3 =
* More code optimizations
* New config file options
* Several bugs fixed

= 1.7.2 =
* Fixed few critical bugs in rating rendering
* Several more bugs in widgets and javascript
* More PHP warnings and notices fixed

= 1.7.1 =
* Major code reorganization, optimization, speed up and less memory usage
* Redesign for some plugins panels
* Many multi review and rating bugs bugs fixed
* Several more problems and notices solved

= 1.7.0 =
* Removed support for wordpress 2.6.x
* Many more new filters for results and rendering
* Cache plugins support for multis ratings
* Improved category based comment integration
* Expanded shortcodes and builder elements
* JavaScript code refactored
* Many more changes and improvements
* Number of bugs fixed
