Version 3.3 is a new major update for GD Rating System Pro, fully rewritten Rich Snippets addon with support for complex snippet types, improved settings rules panel, new shortcodes and many more updates and fixes.
This new release is a very important one, because of its focus on two powerful elements in the plugin that have been enhanced and made future proof, and will be a base for a lot of great new features we have planned for the plugin.
Rich Snippets on steroids
With the increasing importance of the rich snippets used by Google and other search engines, this version of GD Rating System Pro takes a huge leap forward with a completely rewritten Rich Snippets addon (built into the plugin as before). To make sure that previous setups will work, this addon has a legacy mode that is enabled by default, and you can turn it off completely, or you can disable it on specific posts.
Rich snippets now have own post metabox, where you can now choose which rating method is used for rating and which one for author reviews. Based on that, new snippets are able to include both aggregated and review ratings into the snippet (depending on the snippet, most do support this)!
The plugin comes with 8 snippet types in this version, including very complex Product type that can include multiple prices offers from one or more sellers, and Review that can use only author review rating for the reviewed product. The great thing about this system is that it can be extended with more snippet types, and each of the included types can be modified and tweaked based on the search engines changes.
A new free addon is released today for the Recipe Rich Snippet type, and by the end of this month, you can expect one more free addon for the Book Rich Snippet type. Some more complex snippet types (Event, Business and more) will be part of the larger premium addon later this year.
And more in this version
The new plugin version includes updated Rules panel, that now supports a selection of the method for some addons when defining settings rules. This allows even finer rules granulation and better control for some addons.
Other new features include new shortcodes for printing value for rating item (no rating blocks, just a value – rating, votes…). Many addons are improved and updated, there are many small updates to the plugin core, and many of the plugin libraries are updated too. As for the bugs, there are a couple of bug fixes included with this release.
Additional addons
Several addons are updated: Multi Ratings Addon is updated to take advantage of some of the changes in the new plugin version, Comments Form and myCRED Simple Integration include a number of updates and fixes. And, two new addons are released: Recipe Rich Snippet Addon (free addon), and myCRED Integration Addon (expanded version, premium addon, more information soon).
For now, if you find any issues with the new version, please report them in the support forum.
