EC Stars Rating

A super fast WordPress star rating plugin, optimized for SEO, and with a really low impact on page load (just CSS + a bit of HTML, plus the strictly required JS for working).

Developers

The svn repo has been recently synchronized with a github one.

Contributions are more than welcome, so feel free to submit a PR there if you wish 🙂

How it works

Basically we create a new table called (prefix)ec_stars_votes, where we store the votes of the people (to prevent duplicate votes).

The number of votes and the sum of the total votes are stored in the (prefix)options table in form of custom meta fields, one for the count, and another for the sum. Both fields get updated when someone votes.

1. Upload the content of the zip package to /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Configure the plugin according to your needs. If you need help you can visit the plugin page
4. Place the following snippet where you want the stars to appear (normally single.php, content-single.php or index.php):
5. Additionally, if you just want the rating to appear in a single post, you can use the next shortcode:
   [ec_stars_rating]

What rich snippets format should I use, microdata or microformats?

Actually, microdata is recommended by Google, but with microformats google detects the stars and uses them in your searches (example).

1. 

   Plugin basic style

1.0.11

The plugin will not output metadata when there are no votes (see issue 2)

1.0.10

Add russian translation

1.0.9

Ensure WP 4.3 compatibility

1.0.8

Ensure WP 4.1 compatibility

1.0.7

Ensure WP 3.9 compatibility

1.0.6

Add best rating metadata to avoid GWT error

1.0.5

Ensure WP 3.8 compatibility

1.0.4

Added shortcode + Widget (beta)

1.0.3

Votes system fix (problem with db), and more internationalization.

1.0.2.1

Include language files

1.0.2

Internationalization

1.0.1

A bit of performance improvements and more accessibility and documentation

1.0

Initial stable release, with some number format fixes.