Ratings can influence a person’s likes, dislikes, interests, more than the actual content at times. Virtual version of crowd mentality I guess. Nevertheless, it is a great way to generate interest. The more popular your content or product becomes, the more the demand for it increases. A simple addition like a star rating to your blog posts and pages, can draw the reader’s attention. And to make comments or ideas fun, you could add a like/dislike option.
There are plenty of WP plugins out there that can cater to your needs. My pick of the lot, the Rating Widget Star Ratings Plugin. The Star Ratings Plugin provides a Rating Widget, which enables you to create and manage ratings from within your WordPress dashboard.
[space]
The main features of Star Ratings Plugin are:
1. You can create unlimited ratings and accept unlimited votes.
2. The rating editor allows you to fully customize your ratings and its placement on your blog’s layout.
3. Supported in over 40 different languages.
4. This plugin also supports BuddyPress and bbPress forum post rating (Pro Version).
[space]
How to use Star Ratings Plugin ?
On activating the plugin from your Dashboard, a plugin with the name ‘Ratings’ appears in the sidebar. The Rating-Widget is a self-hosted rating system, hence you need to create an account to start using the plugin.
[space]
1. Basic Settings of the Plugin
The basic page provides you with options to customize the Rating widget that appears on your website. You can choose to enable it for blog posts, pages and comments. You can also select the type of rating that you want, i.e. thumbs up or star rating. Other options which you can customize are- the User Availability Settings, Specific Visibility Settings, Voting frequency, etc.
[space]
2. Show Top Rated Posts using Top-Rated Widget
You can inform your readers of the top rated posts in your site, which they may not have noticed otherwise. The Top-Rated Widget page enables you to add a beautiful sidebar widget containing the top rated posts on your blog.
You can add Widgets by navigating to Appearance > Widgets.
[space]
3. View a List of Ratings in the Reports Page
Provides you a list of page/post and rating, to keep track of the ratings for your posts and pages.
4. Advanced Settings Page
It allows you to enable/disable the Flash Dependency. This is for browsers which are incompatible with flash. There is also an option to make the Ratings available on the mobile platform.
In my opinion, the Rating-Widget is a very effective plugin that allows you to get feedback from people on your Blog posts, pages and even comments in the form of either thumbs up or star rating and it is free! But there is also a PRO version available with additional features.
It enables visitors to not just read the content of your website or view products, but it also gives them, and you, an opportunity to evaluate the contents of your site. So go ahead and rate this article, it will help me greatly evaluate my post 🙂
