User Generated Reviews

[NickHempsey]

Hey Gang,

This isn't really a Genesis thing, however the site will be built on Genesis...

I have a client, a car dealership, wanting to build a customer review site. The idea is to have a basic landing page with a contact form to be filled out by their customer after they have bought the car. The info would be Name, Message and a 5 Star rating system. The results would then populate a Recent Review area on the front page.

I was thinking I could use Post Via Email to generate new posts for the reviews. Then use Featured Post Widget to pull the posts onto the front page. Pretty simple in theory...

However, I'm not sure how to make PVE generate the post with the formatting that I would want it to have. Reading the doc on setting up PVE says it requires a stripped email with no html.

So how could I get it to show the star rating as well as keep the customers name and message formatted the way I want? I'm really trying to keep it simple for the staff of the dealership. I would like for them to just have to approve the post and be done with it.

I've looked at a few rating system plugins, but they all seem to be for rating a post from a user perspective, not from the authors. If I could just find a plug in that did that I'd be square.

Any ideas on how you might handle the situation?

[NickHempsey]

Well after a bunch of research I found my solution, it's not completely automated, just a few clicks that need to be done by the moderator, but it works. I'm using Gravity forms and GD Ratings in tandem to create the desired effect.

If you want more details let me know.

Thanks to anyone who was thinking about this. If you have any better ways of doing it, I'm still all ears. :)