News 13.1 – New Feature: Reviews
EasyDNNsolutions
In EasyDNN News 13.1, we've introduced a brand-new Reviews feature. In addition to the existing article rating and voting options, the Reviews feature allows users to rate and comment on content, products, or services based on their personal experience.
This functionality helps provide valuable feedback to other users, increases trust and transparency, and supports better decision-making. At the same time, it gives content authors or business owners insight into quality and an opportunity for improvement.
In our demo, we’ve applied this feature to recipe ratings, but it can easily be used for other cases such as:
- Product reviews
- Movie or book ratings
- Software feedback
... and more.
How Does the Reviews Feature Work?
The Reviews feature is an extension of the comments system with added review functionality:
- Reviews are intended for registered users. While it's possible to allow guest users to leave reviews, we recommend keeping it limited to authenticated users for quality control.
- Each user can leave one review per article, consisting of a rating (1–5 stars) and a comment.
- Ratings can be displayed on articles as stars or numeric values.
- Article authors can reply to user reviews.
- The rating/comment form is always visible — even to unauthenticated users. Clicking the form redirects them to the login or registration page.
How to Enable the Reviews Feature
- Go to News Settings > 11. Comments
- Enable the Comments feature: Comments > Enabled
- Enable the option: Use comments as reviews
- Enable: Show commenting form to unauthenticated users
- In 1. Permissions, configure who can comment:
- Set Allow to Comment for Registered Users
Note: The Reviews feature is supported by the following News themes:
NewsDaily, Press, PremiumRecipes, Advantage, NewsEntertainment
Live Example: Recipe Reviews
You can see a working example of the Reviews feature in action with our recipe demo (ingredients and method). Visit the provided link to explore it.
Please note: the ready-made recipe website solution is included in the EDS Theme & Module Collection 20.1+. To replicate the site, simply import the solution, which takes approximately 15 minutes. The result is a fully functional website that you can easily adapt to your needs.