Liker is a plugin for collecting ratings of WordPress posts and pages. The plugin allows you to quickly and accurately gather information about the usefulness of your articles.
Installing the Liker WordPress Plugin
To install the plugin, read the article Installing WordPress Plugin. Installing the plugin takes only a few seconds.
To open the plugin settings slick Settings below plugin name on the plugins page
or in the WordPress Sidebar menu go to Liker
In the plugin settings, there are several tabs responsible for various groups of plugin settings.
General settings
Post Types
Select the post types, including custom post types, where you need to add the rating display. The available types are in the drop-down list.
Position
Position selector sets wherein the Liker will be displayed. You can choose one option:
- Before title
- After title
- Before content
- After content (Default)
- Shortcode [ liker] – use a shortcode to add the voting buttons anywhere on a page or site. There is available a shortcode attribute “btn” which allows you to display a different number of voting buttons on different pages.
For example, to display two Liker buttons on the page regardless of the basic plugin settings:
[ liker btn="2"]Liker type
The setting sets the type of rating that will be used on the site. A different number of buttons can be useful for different tasks and different sites. You can choose between:
- Three buttons ( +1 point / 0 points / -1 point )
- Two buttons ( +1 point / -1point )
- One button ( +1 point )
Also in this settings section, you can specify the text for each button. Both plain text and emoji can be used for the button’s caption.
Layout
The layout setting is needed to control the position of the Liker button block relative to the container. And also to establish the arrangement of the button block relative to the description block.
Description
This is the section of the standard WordPress editor where you can write description text. The description is very important that your users know what to do.
Design
Buttons design settings
Button(s) style
The Liker WordPress Plugin has 12 predefined styles and the 13th setting that includes the default styles of the theme you are using. You can choose one of:
- Border button – transparent background with a colored button border
- Fill button – buttons with a colored background
- Border to Fill – a transparent background with border in a normal button state -> Color background on active state
- Fill to Border – buttons with a colored background in a normal state -> Transparent background with border on active state
- Theme styled button – the theme styles are applied to the buttons, all custom style settings are disabled.
Caption color
Select a text color of the buttons in a normal state.
Base color
Select the background and border color for the buttons in a normal state. Depending on the button style that you choose, this color will be applied to the background or border.
Active button caption color
Select a text color of the buttons in active state.
Active button base color
Select the background and border color for the buttons in an active state. Depending on the button style that you choose, this color will be applied to the background or border.
Hover button caption color
Select a text color of the hover buttons.
Hover button base color
Select the background and border color for the hover buttons. Depending on the button style that you choose, this color will be applied to the background or border.
Button border-radius
Specify a border radius for voting buttons.
Button border-width
Specify a border radius for voting buttons.
Results settings
Results on front-end
This setting allows/denies the display of results on the front end. The results display inside the rating buttons. When the setting is enabled, the toggle Show results before voting is displayed. With it, you can display the voting results to a new user before he votes.
User vote
The toggle to enable/disable the display of voting results of the current user. If the option is enabled, the button with which the user voted is highlighted as active with appropriate style.
Re-voting
The toggle to enable/disable the ability to update user voting results within one session. Once you have left the page, the voting result cannot be changed.
After Page Title
The toggle to enable/disable the vote results display after the title on the posts archive page.
If you enabled the option when your posts already have some votes, the results on the archive page will be displayed after there is at least one new vote for each of the posts.
To add data to the meta fields and thereby display the already existing voting results on the archive page, you need to use a special link. Go to the Liker settings through the dashboard and add to the address bar to the current link “&liker_meta=1“.
For example:
http://localhost:8888/liker.merkulov.design/wp-admin/admin.php?page=mdp_liker_settings&liker_meta=1
To remove the data to the meta fields use the link:
http://localhost:8888/liker.merkulov.design/wp-admin/admin.php?page=mdp_liker_settings&liker_meta=0
Results in the admin area
This parameter defines the format for displaying the results in the admin panel. You can choose between:
- Amount
- Amount/Total
- +1 | 0 | -1
Results will be displayed in the posts/pages list.
Voting limit
This parameter sets the limit of votes from one IP address. You can select any number in the range from 1 to 10.
Limit exceeded message
A field that allows you to change the message text when the user exceeds the vote limit.
Progressbar bar
The toggle to enable/disable the display of voting results in the admin panel in the form of a progress bar.
Reset ratings
The data reset button resets all rating data for all posts. Use this button after the site debugging is completed to reset the debug rating data to 0.
Please note that the Data reset cannot be undone.
Shortcode
top-rated posts
New shortcode support is available since version 2.1. The shortcode allows you to display a list of top-rated posts.
[ liker top="10" for="page" cols="4"]Where the parameters:
- top – number of posts/pages displayed. This parameter is required for the shortcode. The default value is “4”.
- for – the type of posts to be displayed in the list. This parameter is required for the shortcode. Note: the specified type must match the post type in WordPress.
- cols – number of posts list columns, the parameter is not required. Can be set from 1 to 12 number of columns. The default value is “1”.
specific page rating
The shortcode below(available since version 2.2.0) allows you to vote and display the voting results of a certain post/page on another page.
[ liker id="10"]Where :
- id – a post/page identifier whose results you want to display. You can see the post ID by hovering the post title in the posts list.
Numerical value of the rating and voters
The shortcode for displaying the numerical value of the rating.
[liker-rating]
Where :
- you can use parameter id – a post/page identifier whose results you want to display. You can see the post ID by hovering the post title in the posts list.
[liker-rating id="3"]
The shortcode for displaying the number of voters
[liker-count]
Where :
- you can use parameter id – a post/page identifier whose results you want to display. You can see the post ID by hovering the post title in the posts list.
[liker-count id="3"]
Posts display style settings in the top-rated list
Gutter
Specify the gutter between the elements of the post block in the list.
Post image
The toggle to enable/disable the display of the images in the posts list. When the toggle is enabled, there are new options that are available:
- Image size – select the post image size from the available options: Thumbnail, Medium, Large, Full
- Equal image – allows you to set the same height for all post images.
Post title
The toggle to enable/disable the display of the title in the posts list. Here you can select one of the available Post title tags from the list. Depending on the selected tag, the text display style will be changed. These tags also help to make your page more SEO friendly.
Post excerpt
The toggle to enable/disable the display of the post excerpt on the list.
Post rating
The toggle to enable/disable the display of the post rating on the top-rated list. Here you can select Rating icon size.
Rich Snippet
Schema markup
This setting adds schema markup to the page HTML code. Schema markup allows you to display page rating data in Google search results.
Your data will be converted to a 5-star rating system regardless of what type of rating you choose in the plugin settings.
SEO MICRODATA
The option allows you to enable the schema markup by default or add the Advanced Schema Markup using the JSON+LD structure.
JSON+LD MARKUP
Add a markup structure depending on the data types you want to use. Read more about it and find examples in the article https://developers.google.com/search/reference/overview
Once you finish setting up the markup, you can check it for correctness using the tool https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
For Developer
Since version 2.1, the voting results information is stored in post metadata.
Use the code provided below to get the metadata:
get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'mdp_liker', true );
The data you get will look like an array:[
"rating" => 80,
"votes" => 130,
"likes" => [
"positive" => 100,
"neutral" => 10,
"negative" => 20
]
]
For example:
array(3) { ["rating"]=> int(1) ["votes"]=> int(1) ["likes"]=> array(3) { ["positive"]=> int(1) ["neutral"]=> int(0) ["negative"]=> int(0) } }Save Changes
Do not forget to click Save Changes after changing plugin settings. After clicking this button, the settings will be saved and applied to all pages of the website.