Creating a review website

Guru · 2 Dec 2015 at 09:51

Morning all,

I'd like to setup a website where I'll post product reviews with pictures and a probably a few videos. I'd like people to be able to comment on the reviews and possibly put their own reviews on the website too to get a bit more content on there.

I was wondering if I install Wordpress if that would be a suitable base for this to be setup on? I'm happy to learn it from the ground up if it's capable of doing what I'd like

Thanks,

G

Guru · 2 Dec 2015 at 10:12

Cool thanks for the information, all I've done so far is buy a domain name and setup up a web server running IIS (Windows 2008 R2) to host it on.

It was a bit of an impulse buy because of a black friday deal on .com's lol

/edit p.s. that site looks awesome

Guru · 2 Dec 2015 at 11:40

Biz.Kid09 said:
Setup a web server? whereabouts?

Yeah it is a nice site, as you can see it is only a uni project so just goes to show what can be achieved.

Just in my house LOL

Guru · 2 Dec 2015 at 19:18

Thanks for the advice

my server is on 24/7 anyways for email, FTP, terminal server and a couple of other websites.

If I get any kind of traffic I wouldn't want to lose I would move it to somewhere with more resilience

just testing the water initially.

Can't seem to get the install.php to run properly to install Wordpress just yet so need to work that out now, it just opens in ie like I'm reading a text file at the moment.

Guru · 3 Dec 2015 at 16:04

Guru · 3 Dec 2015 at 16:06

iKettles said:
Have you installed PHP on your server?

Hi mate, yeah PHP was installed, I've got it working now, but I've still screwed the PHP file association up, I accidentally told it to always open PHP files with Explorer.exe and now I can't change it back lol.

I ended up making a new website site in IIS that pointed to the PHP file I wanted to open and then ran through the install that way lol.

The site is up now, but empty. I'm just working on a logo at the moment

Learning how much I SUCK at photoshop lol

/edit on a completely unrelated note... did you used to play BF3? With LVL?

Guru · 3 Dec 2015 at 16:50

Logo done but it doesn't seem to show up anywhere apart from at the top of the browser tab so that may have been a bit of a waste of time LOL

Guru · 3 Dec 2015 at 17:24

Don't know if this will work...

/edit Oh cool it did

Thoughts?

Guru · 4 Dec 2015 at 12:49

Ok I've hit another hurdle, I'm trying to write a plugin to integrate Google Analytics into my site... this is what I've put so far....

Code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Google Analytics Plugin
Plugin URI: http://muchreviews.com
Description: Adds a Google analytics tracking code to the <head> of your theme, by hooking to wp_head.
Author: Guru
Version: 1.0
 */
 ?>
 function MuchReviews-GoogleAnalytics() { ?>

		<script>
		  (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
		  (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
		  m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
		  })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

		  ga('create', '*********', 'auto');
		  ga('send', 'pageview');

		</script>
[COLOR="Red"]<?php }[/COLOR]

add_action( 'wp_head', 'MuchReviews-GoogleAnalytics', 10 );

But when I go to activate the plugin I get an error saying:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in D:\Website\MuchReviews_WP\wp-content\plugins\MuchReviews-GoogleAnalytics.php on line 22

I've put line 22 in RED.

I was following this guide here:

https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/create-google-analytics-plugin/

And I thought I'd done it all ok.

Anyone know what I've done to balls this up?

Thanks,

G

Guru · 4 Dec 2015 at 14:09

Thanks mate

This seems to work:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: MuchReviews Google Analytics Plugin
Plugin URI: http://muchreviews.com
Description: Adds a Google analytics tracking code to the <head> of your theme, by hooking to wp_head.
Author: Alex
Version: 1.0
*/

function MuchReviews_GoogleAnalytics() { ?>
<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

ga('create', 'UA-********-1', 'auto');
ga('send', 'pageview');

</script>

<?php }

add_action( 'wp_head', 'MuchReviews-GoogleAnalytics', 10 );

/edit I say it seems to work, I've still got 0 hits on there (despite the fact I've been to the site a few times to test.) but the add-in enabled ok this time.

Guru · 4 Dec 2015 at 16:02

This is the site so far... Obviously early days but what do people think so far?

Http://muchreviews.com

Cheers,

G

Guru · 4 Dec 2015 at 20:51

Thanks mate, I ended up doing it with a different script:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: MuchReviews Google Analytics Plugin
Plugin URI: http://muchreviews.com
Description: Adds a Google analytics tracking code to the <head> of your theme, by hooking to wp_head.
Author: Alex
Version: 1.1
*/
add_action( 'wp_head', 'MuchReviews_GoogleAnalytics' );
function MuchReviews_GoogleAnalytics() {
$analytics = "<script type='text/javascript'>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXX 1']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'none']);
_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();

</script>";

echo $analytics;
}

I THINK it's working now

Guru · 8 Dec 2015 at 11:13

iKettles said:
If you right click the files in explorer then click 'Open With' you can change the final associations. You could however just open up the directory in your browser at localhost/yourdocroot

I did indeed, feels like many moons ago! What was your name on it? I remember being in a squad with Kawusa, JGStonedRaider and a few others. Was great fun!!

Cheers dude, I was DJ_Enigma79 on BF3

yeah I played with Kawusa and JGStonedRaider too at times

I have started playing BF3 again since I got a new mouse, really enjoying it.

Guru · 10 Dec 2015 at 11:19

Wordpress/PHP question

/edit ignore wrong post

Guru · 10 Dec 2015 at 19:22

Good luck!

Guru · 1 Jan 2016 at 19:49

welshdragon said:
Did you buy a theme or build one. Thinking of transitioning my site over to WP.

Sorry slow lame reply, just using a free one.

Guru · 1 Jan 2016 at 19:51

Something seems to have gone wrong with the site though for some reason, I've just put a couple of draft reviews on there, but on the main page the full review is posted instead of a snippet with a "read more..." button like it had on the first two reviews I put on there :/

Guru · 1 Jan 2016 at 22:43

Does anyone know if there is a file in a wordpress configuration that will show which plugins are installed and active? I'm trying to work out which plugins I had in use on my last backup and I want to restore a file that will tell me rather than restoring the whole lot and loading the site up if possible.

Thanks,

G