SFR Book Review Showcase

SFR Book Review Showcase makes it easy to display book reviews from Amazon on your WordPress site. Perfect for book bloggers, review sites, and authors who want to showcase reader feedback in a professional, customisable format.

Whether you’re building a book recommendation site, adding social proof to product pages, or creating a curated reading library, this plugin gives you complete control over how reviews appear.

This plugin is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon. Amazon is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.

Why Use This Plugin?

• Easy import – Capture reviews manually or use the OCR helper to extract text from screenshots
• Flexible display – Grid or list layouts with full control over colours, spacing, and typography
• Smart organisation – Group reviews by category (Fiction, Non-fiction, Photography, etc.)
• Track performance – See which reviews get the most views and clicks
• No bloat – Lightweight, namespaced code that won’t conflict with other plugins

Key Features

• Dedicated admin area with dashboard, paginated WP_List_Table, add/edit form, categories manager, analytics, and settings
• Shortcode and dynamic Gutenberg block with grid/list layouts, customisable colours, typography, spacing, and “Load more” pagination
• Review categories for quick grouping (e.g. Fiction, Puzzle Books, Photography)
• OCR-based importer powered by OCR.space to pull text from screenshots in a guided workflow
• Amazon helpers for ASIN storage, associate IDs for affiliate links, and outbound click tracking
• Analytics summary (views vs clicks, CTR, top performers) stored locally in custom database tables
• Fully namespaced PHP classes (SFRBRS_), functions (sfrbrs_), CSS, and JS handles to prevent conflicts

Shortcode Reference

[sfr_book_reviews]

Supported attributes (camelCase or kebab-case):

• layout (grid|list, default grid)
• limit (1-50, default 6)
• featured (true|false)
• asin (single ASIN)
• category (comma-separated slugs)
• orderby (review_date, star_rating, reviewer_name, asin, status, created_at)
• order (ASC|DESC, default DESC)
• cardBackground, cardTextColor, accentColor (hex colours)
• shadow (true|false, enables card drop shadow)
• gap, padding (pixels)
• titleFontSize, bodyFontSize (pixels)

Examples:

• [sfr_book_reviews featured="true" category="fiction"]
• [sfr_book_reviews asin="B09EXAMPLE" layout="list" limit="3"]
• [sfr_book_reviews shadow="false" cardBackground="#f8fafc" accentColor="#F97316"]
• [sfr_book_reviews category="fiction,mystery" featured="true" layout="grid" limit="9" shadow="true" accentColor="#DC2626"]

External services

This plugin connects to external services to provide certain features:

OCR.space API

The plugin uses OCR.space’s API (powered by Tesseract OCR) to extract text from review screenshots when using the OCR import feature. This service is only used when you explicitly choose to import a review via the OCR helper workflow.

What data is sent:
* Base64-encoded image data (screenshots you upload through the WordPress media library)
* Image metadata (MIME type, language preference)

When data is sent:
* Only when you use the OCR import feature in the admin area
* Images are sent immediately when you click “Extract Text” during the OCR import process
* No data is sent automatically or in the background

Service provider:
* OCR.space (https://ocr.space/)
* Terms of Service: https://ocr.space/ocrapi/TermsOfService
* Privacy Policy: https://ocr.space/ocrapi/PrivacyPolicy

Note: The plugin uses OCR.space’s free API tier by default. You can optionally configure your own API key in the plugin settings if you have an OCR.space account.

1. Upload the plugin folder to wp-content/plugins/ or install via Plugins → Add New
2. Activate the plugin from the Plugins screen
3. Visit Book Reviews → Settings to set your Amazon Associates ID (required for affiliate links), OCR preferences, and styling defaults
4. Add reviews under Book Reviews → All Reviews or import via the OCR helper
5. Use the shortcode or Gutenberg block to display reviews anywhere on your site

0.2.3 – 2025-12-01

Bug Fixes:
* Fixed duplicate Amazon Associate tag parameter in affiliate URLs
* Added auto-generation of Amazon URLs from ASIN, region, and Associate ID on review create/edit page
* Added preview box showing auto-generated URL with “Use This URL” button
* Added override option to manually enter custom Amazon URLs (e.g., for author pages or review pages)
* Fixed affiliate link generation to correctly format tag parameter and prevent duplication
* Improved URL handling to remove existing tag parameters before adding the correct one
* Fixed executable file permissions issue (svn-commit.sh) for WordPress.org compliance

Code Quality:
* Enhanced database query phpcs:ignore comments with detailed explanations
* Improved code documentation for WordPress.org plugin checker compliance

0.2.1 – 2025-11-26

Security & Compliance:
* Fixed all WordPress.org plugin review security issues
* Added proper nonce verification to all form handlers
* Fixed SQL query preparation to use placeholders correctly
* Replaced $_POST array processing with individual field extraction
* Added proper output escaping for HTML content
* Added External Services documentation for OCR.space API usage
* Fixed variable naming in uninstall.php

Bug Fixes:
* Fixed undefined variable warnings in review form data retrieval
* Corrected readme.txt documentation regarding Amazon API calls (plugin does not call Amazon APIs)

0.2.2 – 2025-11-27

Version 0.2.2 (27 November 2025) addresses all issues identified in the 0.2.1 review.

Security Fixes:
* Fixed nonce verification logic in edit review page to fail early if nonce is missing or invalid
* Added nonce verification to all edit links in reviews list table
* Moved nonce check to start of bulk actions handler before accessing request data
* Improved nonce handling for both single and bulk delete actions

Code Standards:
* Replaced inline style tag in helper file with wp_add_inline_style() for WordPress.org compliance
* Fixed ABSPATH check in helper file to use strict exit instead of conditional WordPress loading
* Refactored SQL queries to use single prepare() calls with all values passed together
* Enhanced SQL query safety documentation and comments
* Fixed global variable naming to use plugin prefix (sfrbrs_) in helper file and uninstall.php
* Added proper phpcs:ignore comments for all prepared SQL queries with detailed explanations

0.2.0 – 2025-11-15

New Features:
* Added review categories with admin management, list table filters, and quick edit
* Introduced analytics dashboards with view/click metrics, summaries, and charts
* Implemented OCR-based review import workflow with helper tips
* Enhanced shortcode and block styling controls, category filters, and load-more pagination

Improvements:
* Hardened security with sanitised inputs, escaped outputs, and prepared queries
* Added shortcode attribute recovery so Gutenberg’s Shortcode block preserves styling controls
* Applied Plugin Check fixes for $wpdb access (table/column quoting plus placeholder-based LIMIT/OFFSET)
* Added uninstall handler to drop custom tables, remove options, clear scheduled events, and purge cached transients when the new “Delete plugin data when uninstalling” toggle is enabled
* Introduced a “Delete plugin data when uninstalling” option so you control whether reviews persist across reinstalls

0.1.0

• Initial release