User-Ranking of Content

The Content Review feature lets you:

The ContentReview server control enables Ektron users, membership users, and site visitors to rate and review content on a Web page, and lets you display the reviews on your site. See Also: ContentReview Server Control

Ektron restricts users to one review per page. If a regular or membership user logs in before rating a piece of content, Ektron remembers the user ID. For any other site visitor, Ektron places a cookie on his computer. So, when a page with a ContentReview server control is visited, Ektron checks the user ID and cookie. If neither exists, it displays a rating scale. If the user already rated the page, the user can edit his review but not enter a new one.

NOTE: If you are not logged in as an Ektron or membership user, the browser must have cookies enabled to submit a content review.

Viewing a history of reviews

Viewing a History of Reviews

  1. Go to Workarea > Content > the folder that contains the content.
  2. Click the content item.
  3. Click View Content Reports (). (For an eCommerce catalog entry, select Reports > Content Statistics.) The Rating tab is selected by default. If desired, enter a range of start and end dates.

  5. Click Get Reviews.
  6. If Microsoft Excel is installed on your computer, you can export the ratings detail to Excel for further data manipulation. To do so, click Export to Excel at the bottom of the Content Report.
Moderating reviews

Moderating Reviews

Ektron lets you moderate reviews. This means that a review must be approved by an Ektron user who has Edit permission for the content before it appears on your site. You enable or disable this capability via each ContentReview server control's Moderate property. The options for authorized users to moderate reviews are as follows.

  • Workarea > Smart Desktop > Content Reviews
  • Workarea > Reports > Contents > Content Reviews
  • Content Rating screen associated with a content item

Upon viewing a pending review, an authorized user has 3 choices.

  • approve it—your Web site displays the review
  • decline it—it is stored with the content's review history but is not visible on your site
  • edit it—update then approve it; your Web site displays the edited version

If a ContentReview server control is moderated, the following occurs.

  • a site visitor sees a submitted review only after it is approved.
  • an Ektron user can view the status of his review by logging into the Workarea and clicking Reports > Contents > Content Reviews.

If a review was rejected or has been pending for too long, the user can submit another.

Viewing pending reviews

Viewing Pending Reviews

  1. From the Smart Desktop, click the Content Review widget.

    You can approve or decline reviews from the Content Review widget. But if you click View All> and proceed to the Pending Reviews screen, you have additional options.

  2. Click View All>. The Pending Reviews screen appears. You can also access the Pending Reviews screen from the Workarea > Reports > Contents > Content Reviews.
  3. From there, you can
    • Approve or decline a review—click the appropriate radio button

    • Edit a review's rating, review, or status—click its title and an edit screen appears. Change as needed.
    • Print pending reviews—click Print ().
    • Email—click Email () to email this report to Ektron users. Next, select recipients, then click Email ().
    • Filter reviews by folder— Click Folder () and navigate to the folder that contains pending reviews. Then, click Save.
    • Filter reviews by language—from the Language drop-down, select the language of the pending reviews.

      NOTE: To delete a review, use the Content Review Screen. See Also: Moderating Reviews from the Content Review Screen

  4. After you approve or decline reviews, click Save. Approved reviews appear on the site.

    NOTE: A site visitor can change his review at any time, even if its status is pending or rejected; then, the information is updated in the Workarea, and the review's status changes to pending.

Moderating reviews from the content review screen

Moderating Reviews from the Content Review Screen

  1. In the Workarea, navigate to the content item.
  2. Click View Content Reports ().
  3. Click the Rating tab.
  4. Click Get Reviews. A list of reviews appear for the content.
  5. Click the date of content to be moderated. The View Content Review screen appears.

    • To change information on this screen, click Edit. From the Edit screen, you can change the rating, review and status. When finished, click Save.
    • To delete the review, click Back () then Delete ().
Purging review data

Purging Review Data

  1. Within the Workarea, navigate to the content.
  2. Click View Content Reports ().
  3. Select the date range of the data you want to purge using Start Date and End Date.
  4. Click Purge Reviews.
  5. Click OK to the confirmation message.
ContentReview server control

ContentReview Server Control

The ContentReview server control lets site visitors rate content on your site. Place this control on a template that displays content items or eCommerce products. For example, you place this control on a Master page and set its DynamicParameter property to ID. Then, when a Web form containing a content item or product passes its ID to the QueryString, a site visitor can use the control to record a review.

You can use the ContentReview server control as follows:

  • Place a star-based scale on a Web page. Site visitors use the scale to rate a content item. Depending on the XSLT, they can also submit review comments.
  • Display reviews and comments about a content item, or by a specific site or membership user.

NOTE: On a PageBuilder page, you can insert a ContentReview server control using the Calendar widget. See Also: Widget Reference. The eCommerce Product List server control also can display the star-based scale.

ContentReview server control properties

The following are Ektron-specific server control properties. You can find information about native .NET properties such as font, height, width and border style in Visual Studio® help.

  • DoInitFill (Boolean)

    By default, Fill occurs during the Page_Init event. Set to false if you want to postpone the fill-action until later. In this case, Fill is automatically called during the Page Render event. You might do this if you need to set or change a property on the control in code-behind and have it render with your changes shown.

  • DisplayXslt (String)

    Select the type of review to display, or enter the path to a custom XSLT. For additional information, see Using the DisplayXSLT Property. Choices are:

    • Ajax 5 Stars—a 5 star rating system utilizing Ajax for display.
    • Ajax 5 Stars Comment—a 5 star rating system utilizing Ajax for display. When you hover over the stars, a comment box appears. Comments that are added are submitted via an Ajax call.
    • Ajax 5 Stars with Increments—a 5 star rating system with half star increments that utilizes Ajax for display.
    • 5 Stars—a 5 star rating system that allows visitors to add text reviews of content.
    • 5 Stars with Increments—a 5 star rating system with half star increments that allows visitors to rate and add a text review of the page's content.
    • Review List—displays a list of reviews for content or a user. See Also: Displaying Content Reviews on the Site and Displaying a User Review on the Site.
    • Path to Custom Xslt—If desired, enter a relative or absolute path to an Xslt that determines the display of the page.

    WARNING! If you specify an external file, do not store this file in the Workarea folder. If you store this file in the Workarea folder, the file will be lost when you upgrade.

  • DynamicParameter (String)

    To make this content review control dynamic, select id. When you do, this server control is attached to the content block passed as a URL parameter.

  • DynamicUserParameter (String)

    When using this control to retrieve a user’s reviews, set this property to UserId to make the user’s ID dynamic.

  • GetReviews (ReviewTypes)

    Returns a list of reviews for content or a user.

    • None—do not return reviews.
    • Content—returns reviews based on the content ID provided in the DefaultContentID property.
    • User—returns reviews based on the User ID provided in the UserId property.
  • Hide (Boolean)

    Hides or displays the output of the control in design time and run time.

    • True—Hide the control output.
    • False—Display the control output.
  • Language (Integer)

    Set a language for viewing content; shows results in design-time (in Visual Studio) and at run-time (in a browser).

  • MaxReviews (Integer)

    The number of reviews to retrieve if the GetReview property is set to Content or User. 0 (zero) = unlimited.

  • Moderate (Boolean)

    Setting this property to True allows Ektron users to moderate reviews. See Also: Moderating Reviews

  • RatingsMinimum (Integer)

    Sets a minimum number of reviews before displaying the average rating. When set to 0 (zero), the average rating appears as soon as content is rated the first time.

  • SuppressWrapperTags (Boolean)

    Suppresses the output of the span/div tags around the control.

    • True—Suppress wrap tags.
    • False (default)—Allow wrap tags.
  • UserID (Long)

    The user ID for which to get reviews. If left blank, reviews from all users are returned. If a user ID is specified, only reviews for that user are returned.

    WARNING! The GetReviews property must be set to User for the control to use this property.

  • WrapTag (String)

    Lets a developer specify a server control’s tag.

    • Span (default)—designate an inline portion of an HTML document as a span element.
    • Div—apply attributes to a block of code.
    • Custom—Lets you use a custom tag.
Using the DisplayXSLT property

Using the DisplayXSLT Property

Reviews communicate your site community's feelings about a product or article. They also empower community members by giving them a voice. The ContentReview server control’s DisplayXSLT property manages the display of reviews on your site. The control can display reviews for specific content or a specific user.

The following list shows an example of each XSLT as it appears on a Web page with a description and the XSL file being used. The files are located in webroot\siteroot\Workarea\Xslt.

WARNING! If you want to edit an existing file, you are strongly urged to make a copy, change its name and move it outside of your site's Workarea folder. If you make changes to this file and do not move it out of the Workarea, this file and the changes will be lost when you upgrade. The files are copies of files built, transformed and used, internally.

  • Ajax 5 Stars—rating5star.xsl—A 5-star rating system utilizing Ajax for display.

  • Ajax 5 Stars Comment—rating5starComment.xsl—A 5-star rating system utilizing Ajax for display. When you hover over the stars, a review box pops-up. Visitor comments are submitted via an Ajax call.

  • Ajax 5 Stars with Increments—rating5starinc.xsl—A 5-star rating system with half-star increments that uses Ajax for display.

  • 5 Stars—rating5starAddEdit.xsl—A 5-star rating system that lets visitors add text reviews of content.

  • 5 Stars with Increments—rating5starincAddEdit.xsl—A 5-star rating system with half star increments that allows visitors to add text reviews of content.

  • Review List—ratinglist.xsl—Displays a list of reviews for content or a user.
Displaying content reviews on the site

Displaying Content Reviews on the Site

  1. Drag and drop a ContentReview server control on a Web form.
  2. Set the DefaultContentID property to the ID of the content whose reviews will be displayed. You can make the reviews for the content item dynamic by leaving DefaultContentID blank and setting DynamicParameter to ID.
  3. Set the DisplayXSLT property to Review List. If you want to change the look and feel of the review list, modify an existing XSL file or create your own. If you modify an existing XSL, you should save the modified file with a different name. Then, enter the path to the file in the DisplayXSLT property.
  4. Set the GetReviews property to Content.
  5. Save the Web form.

Displaying a user review on the site

Displaying a User Review on the Site

  1. Drag and drop a ContentReview server control on a Web form.
  2. Set the DisplayXSLT property to Review List. If you want to change the look and feel of the review list, modify an existing XSL file or create your own. If you modify an existing XSL, you should save the modified file with a different name. Then, enter the path to the file in the DisplayXSLT property.
  3. Set the GetReviews property to User.
  4. Set the UserID property to the ID of the user for which reviews will be displayed. You can make the list of reviews for a user dynamic by leaving the UserID blank and setting the DynamicParameter to ID.
  5. Save the Web form.

Retrieving the XML structure of a ContentReview

Retrieving the XML Structure of a ContentReview

Retrieving the XML structure of XML content allows for greater control over developing XSLs.

  1. Open a new Web form.
  2. Drag and drop a ContentReview server control onto it.
  3. Set the DefaultContentID property.
  4. Drag and drop a textbox on the Web form.
  5. Set its TextMode property to MultiLine. You should set the width of the text box to at least 400px.
  6. On the code-behind page, add the following line.
  7. Textbox1.Text = ContentReview.XmlDoc.InnerXml
  8. Build the project.
  9. View the Web form in a browser. The XML structure of the collection appears in the textbox.

For an additional example, see the ContentReview XML page on the CMS400Developer samples page. It is located at:

In a browser:

http://siteroot/CMS400Developer/Developer/ContentList/ContentListXML.aspx

In the source code:

siteroot/CMS400Developer/Developer/ContentList/ContentListXML.aspx and ContentListXML.aspx.vb