WPReviewEngine is a plugin that extends WordPress further, making it easier for you to make your own review sites. It can be a good alternative if you want to get your site up and running quickly, and this review shows you what this plugin can do.

Ease of Use and Installation

WordPress is well-known for its ease of use, and WPReviewEngine is designed to be just as usable. The plugin also comes with a helpful documentation and a getting started guide, while installation is as easy as uploading and activating the plugin. Once it’s activated, you are given a plugin settings page where you can set the general configuration of the plugin. Additionally, you get two different administration pages under Posts in Dashboard: Rating Categories page where you set the kind of things to rate in your review, and Mass Apply page, a handy feature where you can apply rating categories to all Posts at once.

The user interface for the plugin settings is intuitive and clearly labeled, so you will not get confused while setting up your site the way you want.

Support and Documentation

All the available licenses grant you a lifetime support, given either via e-mail or direct IM contact with Louis, the author of the plugin itself. Live chat can be very useful if you just need to ask quick questions, and one-on-one support via e-mail should be good if you have many questions at once. The plugin also comes with a detailed documentation, which you can refer to before you send any support questions.

Generating Comparison Tables

WPReviewEngine can automatically create comparison tables from items you have reviewed. These tables can be placed on the home page, a category page or even embedded on your own Page, all without you having to touch any code. You are free to control what items show up on the table, and it’s possible to change the order of the items. The comparison tables generated by this plugin look like this:

Stylability and Compatibility with Other Themes

WPReviewEngine is designed to work with any theme. It has a pre-styled embedding option where the reviews are already styled regardless of what theme is being used. Furthermore there are plenty of advanced configuration options to make the reviews look better in a theme: you can add star ratings, thumbnail images and other useful features. It even has an API feature where you or your programmer can have full access to the plugin’s output, effectively allowing you to customize it completely to your need.

Enable User-Generated Reviews and Ratings

Aside from your own editorial reviews, WPReviewEngine allows your visitors to write their own reviews and give their ratings too. You can easily add star ratings and review box to the comment section of your website:

Both yours and your visitors’ ratings will then be taken into account for the final rating of the item being reviewed.

CSV Import

Say you already have your own contents stored in a Comma-Separated Values (CSV) files or you want to import content from an affiliate network. No worries, you can tell WPReviewEngine to take that file and use it to populate your site’s content. The documentation included with the plugin should tell you how to do this in details.

Google Maps

A neat feature of WPReviewEngine is that you can specify the address of the item your are reviewing (say, a business address) and it will show the Google Maps map for that location. You can also customize how this map looks in the options page.

Post Sorting Options

WPReviewEngine allows you to sort your Posts either by WordPress’ default (newest Post first), by number of comments or most importantly by its rating.

Bayesian Weighting

Bayesian Weighting, an important feature for sites that allows user-generated ratings, is also supported. With this you can be sure that the final rating for reviewed items are calculated fairly; not just by the average ratings, but also by taking the popularity of the item into account.

Dummy Comments Generation

If you’re aiming to create a highly reputable and valuable website, you will not need this. However, WPReviewEngine also allows you to automatically generate comments for your contents, complete with ratings. Best use it with care.

Affiliate Link Management

There’s a basic link management provided where you can cloak an affiliate link with your own custom URL. For further functionality like statistics, the plugin supports the use of Google Analytics and Trackings202.

Included Themes

WPReviewEngine comes with one included theme that looks quite good:

The plugin is likely to work best with this theme, but as mentioned before, it can play well with any other theme too.

Pricing and Licensing

There are two different licenses, both require a one time payment:

WPReviewEngine Lifetime License ($99.95 USD)

You are limited to one website.

WPReviewEngine Unlimited License ($169.95 USD)

You can use the plugin on any number of websites.

Refund Policy

You can get a 100% full, no question asked refund within 30 days of purchase, which is great.

Other Notable Features

• WPReviewEngine works on WordPress Posts as well as Pages.
• You can build local directories with a YellowPages import tool.
• Two custom sidebar widgets, Top Rated items and Recent Comments.

Missing Features

• Review Microformat (hReview)