Version 3.2 is a new major update for GD Rating System Pro, bringing new addon (for syncing ratings to WordPress metadata), new options to display a compact number of votes, improvements to widgets, query and shortcodes and more.
GD Rating System Pro now has 18 add-ons built into the plugin!
Sync Meta Addon
The addon number 18 is called Sync Meta (yes, it is part of the Pro plugin, no need for extra download), and it can sync the ratings into WordPress metadata custom fields for posts, comments, terms and users. This way, you can use these meta fields in WP_Query without the need to connect to rating tables. There is no speed benefit to this, but many users find it easier because they are already familiar with WP_Query and Meta_Query.
You can sync all data (for all rating items and for all rating methods). You can select which rating methods data to sync globally, or, if you prefer, you can create settings rule and sync posts only (for instance) or even one post type only with one or more rating method data. Also, you have a new tool that can perform the sync based on the rules any time you want. Without this tool, sync will be done once the rating is saved for the rating item. Use the tool to sync everything you need when you enable this addon for the first time.
Compact votes counts
All methods (with the exception of Review methods) have new settings to format a number of votes for display purposes and show them compacted: 1000 will be 1K, 1000000 will be 1M and so on. You can also specify the number of decimal places to use.
Posts and Comments integration priority
Addon Posts can automatically add rating blocks into posts and post types using the the_content filter. Now, you can specify filter priority for each post type, allowing you to move the position of the rating block, important especially if other plugins are adding content using the same filter. Comments integration has similar priority value also. Posts addon integration performance is improved.
Filters and Query enhancements
Rating query object, all list widgets and shortcodes using this query object, now have new filters for post_type and post_status (to be used for some rating item types – post_type for comments, post_status for posts). Shortcake UI is also expanded with these new filters. And, finally, the terms and author (user) filters are expanded to allow excluding of the terms/users by specifying ID’s as negative values. This way, you can filter by terms to include and terms to exclude (very useful for hierarchical terms to exclude specific terms only).
And more in this version
There are tons of enhancements in this version, including updates to the Addon About panel, new settings for Emote This rendering, Thumbs Rating styling is improved, widgets layout is improved. As for the bugs, there are several bugs fixed, including problem with WP_Query integration sorting with the Thumbs Rating method and items with negative rating appearing above items with no rating, same issue with Comments Query, problems with period query and default settings for it, broken Emote This feed display, various issues with Thumbs List styling and few other things.
What’s next?
Multi Ratings Addon will get an update next week with few new features, and the new demo website will be up and running just before that and include two major detailed demos and 3 more demos for specific features.
For now, if you find any issues with the new version, please report them in the support forum.
