GD Star Ratings is a very sophisticated plugin that allows you to assign ratings and votes to posts, comments and more. This guide will take you through installing the plugin, setting it up and using it.
Install Plugin
In your WordPress admin panel, click on “Plugins -> Add New”.
Next, you can search for “GD Star Ratings” in the search box.
Once you find it, click “Install Now”
You will be asked if you’re sure you want to install it. Click “OK”.
Now you need to enter information about your website including your hostname, FTP username and password. Your hostname is usually your domain name. In most cases, you’ll will have an FTP connection. Click “Proceed” when you’re done.
Activate Plugin
Once you see the message that says you successfully installed the plugin, click “Activate Plugin”.
Manage Settings
When your plugin is activated, you’ll see a “Settings” option. Click it.
The settings are actually quite complex and you may not need to use all of them. Below, you can see what the settings menu looks like. We’ll go over each section briefly.
If you look through the features menu, you’ll see some quite technical settings. If you’re not sure what something is, you can certainly leave everything at the default settings. As you get to know the plugin, you can start tweak things.
Features
Some settings you can control here include putting a time limit on adding ratings, moderation options, rating of comments, etc.
Security
Security allows you to adjust settings for banning IPs, user level permissions and more.
Advanced
This tab gives you access to settings for caching, trend calculations, importing and exporting data.
Integration
Some of the settings on this tab are controlling how users can rate, widgets and more.
Articles
This tab lets you control rating settings for articles. You can control the look of the ratings (there are different color and holiday themes), positioning, control who can vote (you can set it so only users can vote) and more.
Comments
This tab lets you control the same rating settings as in the Articles tab, but these settings are for comments.
Multis
Multis are multiple ratings for the same article / product. For example, you can set up ratings for price, value, performance, etc. In this tab, you can control most of the same rating settings as in the Articles and Comments tab.
Articles
This tab allows you to control the settings for voting on articles. You can determine which posts can be voted on, how the votes look and where they appear.
Comments
This tab allows you to control the settings for voting on comments. You can determine which comments can be voted, how the votes look and where they appear.
Special
This tab controls snippets, RSS features and more.
Add New Post
To get started, go to the Posts menu on the far left side. Click “Add New”.
How to Set Up Multi Sets
The multis feature is likely to be very important to a review site, so let’s make sure we get that set up. You can find the setting for this in the menu of your WordPress admin.
Now click “Add New Multi Rating Set”.
Enter the details for your multi set. You can give it a name, description, determine the number of stars use and decide how the multis will appear.
Then you can add your elements and decide if some will have more weight than others for the overall game rating.
Click “Save Multi Set” when you’re done. Now you’re ready to use your multi-set on your first review post.
Make a Post
In the left menu of WordPress Admin, find the “Posts” menu and click “Add New”.
Enter your post as you would normally. At the bottom of the page, you can see your multis options and can select your set from the drop down menu.
Now when your users or visitors see the post, they can cast their vote, depending on the settings you have chosen.
Then on the right side of your post editing menu, you can see some controls that all you to determine who can rate on the post.
As you can see, this is a very powerful review plugin, even if it seems over-complicated at first. Through continued use of the plugin, it’s wide variety of features and customizations will become more and more useful.