How to configure Star Rating System PRO

A detailed HOW TO about how to run our software fast and easy.

Setup

The first thing to do after downloading the ZIP file from the server (see the message you have received when purchasing the product), is to place the files in a folder (for ex: ratepro/). The next step is to set a few files/folders to CHMOD 777, using either Dreamweaver or any other FTP client. The most important files are config.inc.php, /tmp/extraconfig.inc.php and the tmp/ folder.

Enter your domain name in the browser's URL field followed by installer/ i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com/ratepro/installer/ and follow the below steps. Once the software is installed, remove the installer/ folder from the server. If everything went well, go to the configuration page. If not, proceed to manual installation.

Manual setup

In case the installer fails for some reason, you may set your software up manually. CHMOD 777 your files and folder as stated before, enter phpMyAdmin on your server and go to the SQL tab (see the below image)

Next, edit the config.inc.php file and fill out your database authentication info. In the
define("RATEPRO_INDEX_URL", "http://www.yourdomain.com/ratepro/"); row, enter the FULL URL to ratepro path.

Software configuration

The next step is to access the software's control panel, that may be found on the http://www.yourdomain.com/ratepro/admintool/ link. The default username and password is demo/demo.
Access the configuration tab, where you have to change the username and the password (for security reasons) and to configure RATEPRO_REAL_INDEX_URL =http://localhost (which is set by default) in http://www.yourdomain.com/ (where you change the domain to the one where the software is running.
The rest of the settings is not important in the first phase. You might want to set the RATEPRO_DEBUGMOD = YES before launching and back to NO afterwards.

Testing the software

Access http://www.yourdomain.com/ratepro/. You will find a small user manual here and a few examples from which you will have to select the ones that are most appropriate to your site. For those who do not know PHP, we recommend the JavaScript versions. Those who wish to integrate the software on a more advanced level, have to have PHP knowledge (for ex. Joomla, Drupal or any other similar software)

We can provide a small example. If we have http://www.yourdomain.com/mypage.html and want to add the rating and commenting facility to this page, we have to edit the file using an HTML editor (preferably a visual one).

The example below is for those who have PHP files (even if with .htm extension) and may automatically detect the URL of the accessed page.

Look and feel of the software

The integration itself requires CSS and HTML knowledge.
template_board_input.html - is the file that needs to be edited for the look and feel of the comment board. Here you may modify the look and may take out a few variables that are not needed, though these may be easily deactivated using the admintool as well. Please be careful not to remove the comments from the HTML, as the software relies on these. The rest may be edited as you wish, maintaining the HTML logic.
template_board_list.html - is the template for listing the board comments. The same rule may be applied as in case of the input file.
template_articol.html - remove the dummy text from this file, as this was left there for example only.

Registration

Many of our customers have requested that the software includes the user registration module as well, so that only those users may post a comment that are registered. Unfortunately we don't have a solution for every situation, but we will describe an example we have applied in one of our websites.

We have added in the FAQ template (Knowledge base) the variable that verifies whether the user is logged in or not. In case he is logged in, we display the rating script and the board. In case he is not authenticated, we redirect him to the authentication page and display only the rating of the article using jsrateitem.php.