Contempo Reviews

An all in one review, map and testimonial system

• created: 06/01/2013
• latest update: 10/05/2013
• by: James McBride
• email: jleo2525@live.com

The best option for a Wordpress review system that produces seo rich testimonials.

To install the Contempo Reviews plugin on your Wordpress site, simply go to the plugins page and click 'upload' at the top.  Then, select the zipped file, click "Install Now," and activate.

Contempo Reviews is an excellent plugin for creating a review form and then displaying those reviews both on a map and as styled, rated testimonials.  The testimonials are seo-ready and look fantastic in all major browsers and mobile devices.

This is how the user would experience this plugin once installed on your site:

Step 1: User leaves a review

Step 2: After the review is approved by the wordpress admin in the comments area, the review can be displayed on a map and as a styled, seo-friendly testimonial

Step 1: Style your review form however you want, by clicking on the "Contempo Review" menu on the left.

here you can choose from a variety of options.  They are as follows:

• Use default style - choose to use the default grey gradient the plugin originally used.  This option overrides all other styling options
• Testimonial color - the background color of your testimonials.
• Shine overlay - use a shine effect for your testimonials
• Testimonial Font Family - choose from any of the font families available in google webfonts
• Font color - choose the font color you will use
• Text shadow - choose a light or dark text shadow
• Rating Type - Major search engines use this to create either a 1-5 point based rating system or a percentage rating system

Step 1: Go to the page or post you would like to include the review form on, and in the "Customer Review Options" box, click "Display Review Form" checkbox and input the options you would like.

The options for this review form include:
 

• Review form title - h2 title that will appear above the review form
• Review form description - short, descriptive paragraph enclosed in p tags that will appear above the form
• Type of Service/Item - You can use this option to filter your testimonials by page.  For example, if you have 5 products you would like 5 seperate testimonial pages for, you can easily create all 5 pages, input the Item that was chosen in this review form in the testimonial options, and display all the reviews left for that specific item in the content of that page
• Rated Service/Item - Get ratings for specific features of the items you are build the review form for
• Other review form fields - This allows a user to put in information specific to his location and address for both the map feature, and so you can contact him.  His specific address and phone number will never be made available to the public by this plugin

Step 2: copy and paste the [review_form] shortcode:

To approve the reviews your site receives, simply go to the "comments" section in wordpress, hover over the review you would like to approve, and click "Approve."

This Plugin uses the pages, posts and custom post types of Wordpress to provide an easy interface for managing your review maps. All you have to do is set the city/town center of the map in the page options and the zoom (1 is zoomed all the way out, and 12 is zoomed all the way in).

Here are some easy to follow step-by-step instructions:

Step 1:  Choose your settings in the page options area

Step 2: Copy and Paste the [review_map] Shortcode (feel free to use any combination of shortcodes you see fit):

Again, the testimonial settings are built into the pages, posts and custom post types of Wordpress upon installation. Simply choose your settings, the city/town and/or service you would like the testimonials to display for and the "Reviews" will populate for that area/service.

Important: To display testimonials for ALL cities or ALL services/items, simply leave those fields blank.

The review testimonial options include

• Display Testimonials for what city - all testimonials will be displayed based on the city the user selected when filling out the form
• Display Testimonials for what Service/Item - all testimonials will be displayed for that specific service, item or company
• Paginate Testimonials after - Testimonials will be paginated after they have reached the number specified on an individual page
• Create excerpt if testimonial is longer than 350 characters - this option is great for mobile devices.  Select it if you would like a nice colorbox enabled ellipse when reviews run long
• SEO info - enter any information in these fields you may have to increase the SEO relevancy of your testimonials and allow the rich snippet feature to acheive its full effect