Overworked Big Board Owner Needs GARS Replacement

[Phrost]

Hi.

In a nutshell, a year ago we made the mistake of upgrading to VB4, thinking there would eventually be a replacement for/similar to GARS, specifically with regards to allowing our members to review a product/service and rate it on multiple criteria.

Since then, nothing's emerged that's even close, and we've purchased several commercial add-ons that turned out to be garbage.

We're hoping that the VBA crew has something that can save us. What we need is:

• Forum integration (duh)
• Simple enough for meatheaded martial artists to use
• The ability to rate a product or instructor or school on several criteria (ex. cleanliness 1-10, facility 1-10, etc.)

Do any of the VBA products fill these? And if so, what is the fastest way I can give you lots and lots of money?

[Brian]

vBa Dynamics is similar to GARS in some ways and may be a suitable replacement. Note though that it does NOT use default vBulletin forums like GARS does. vBa Dynamics creates an entirely separate section for your website. It does of course integrate with the vBulletin login system, templates, phrases, and etc. The only type of default rating system is a 5 star system where you could rate articles, similar to rating threads in vBulletin. It does include options to add custom fields though, so you could always add a select menu with options ranging from 1-10 to handle the multiple ratings.

[Phrost]

Would there be any way to limit the input of those fields to integers of 1-10?

[Brian]

Yes. If you create those fields as select menus then it will show a drop-down select menu with only the choices you've allowed.

[Phrost]

Ok, sorry to keep bumping this but I just ran into a problem with 3 other scripts I've been trying to implement as a GARS replacement.

Here's the key question: will this allow me to use existing threads, adding extra fields to them, or is the content entirely separate from the vbulletin thread system? I have hundreds if not thousands of reviews that were in GARS, and they're just ordinary threads now. I need to re-enable the option for people to put numerical ratings on the products those threads review, so I'm basically looking for a system that (like GARS) adds additional fields to existing threads.

Can VBA do this?

Edit: just re-read that this creates an entirely new section on the site. Is there a means of importing existing threads into it?

[Brian]

There is an import script here, but it has not been updated to work with vB4.

[Phrost]

Edit: nevermind, would be an SEO nightmare. Still <3 VBA though!

[tavenger5]

I am kind of doing this on one of my sites:
http://nikonites.com/products/index.php

The system that allows members to add products to their profile is custom.