I am looking into making a website which will include user reviews. The way I want to set these reviews up is to have a form where the user would fill out and submit which would become a review on another page. (I will also have many other things on this website such as articles, stories, resources, how tos, FAQs and possibly a forum.) Someone suggested I use WordPress for this, but I dont know anything about WP. I would love some input on whether WP would be a good idea or if another CMS would be better. And if you think another would be better, which one? Thanks!
If you are looking for a commercial grade solution, there is vivvo, vbulletin and review post. Links: Reviewpost - http://www.reviewpost.com/ Vbulletin - http://www.vbulletin.com Vivvo - http://www.vivvo.net/ Vivvo is a content management system that will plug straight into vbulletin. Then reviewpost integrates into vbulletin as well. And then there is Subdreamer - www.subdreamer.com It comes with vbulletin integration, news letter module...... and lots of other stuff.. Between either of those CMSs, vbulletin and review post, that should cover everything you want. Dont forget vbulletin as customized profiles, picture galleries and all the modifications you can install to the forum. The reason I recommended VBulletin, Reviewpost has integration with UBB threads, VBulletin and PHPBB.
Please try to use Joomla. Joomla CMS free and many extensions that could be used. link: website: http://joomla.org extensions: http://extensions.joomla.org extensions for rating and review: http://extensions.joomla.org/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=listcats&cat_id=1797&Itemid=35
Have a look drupal it even has it's own forum built into core though I believe there are plugins if other fourms are preferred. If using other plugins or bridging modules, in effect that basically means two databases and each kept in sync with the other. This can be problematic, at times when one database user tables updated and not the other. I've not used Joomla so can't comment on its functionality but I'm half assuming it would do the job as well.
I'm curious why you would want the reviews to be on another page? Most reviews sites have the reviews at the bottom of the product page, and this makes a lot of intuitive sense. WordPress would be a great option for doing something like this. There are several plugins which extend the functionality of WordPress to allow you to do reviews. One of the better ones is: WordPress Review Site Plugin In terms of the forum, you could integrate BB Press with Wordpress, or you could use another forum like vbulletin or phpBB. WordPress will allow you to add articles, and create tag pages and category pages for increased search engine visibility. I also think you'll find that WordPress is very flexible with a ton of plugins that can add some nice functions to yoru site, like the All in One SEO plugin. Just page through that area on the Wordpress.org site and look at all the amazing open source plugins there are.
thanks for all the links! as far as the reviews go, what im thinking is a link to a form on the reviews page that would take the user to another page to fill out the form. the form would have quite a bit of info to fill out to get the best possible review thats why that form would be on another page. I will go check out those links and thanks for the info!
Wordpress is good but your limited to functionality with some of the features you are wanting, I would have to say use VBulletin it has a portal plugin for your homepage,a forum of course and a ton of plugins and skins you can use. here is a great review plugin i use: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=108514 Code (markup): I find that integrating a forum can be a pain with wordpress,it may require some actual code hacking and theme changes so it matches and looks correct. good luck with it
Thanks for recommending my plugin! I have used WordPress as a CMS for all kinds of sites... would you believe Website Goodies, even all the tools, runs on WordPress? It's a 12 year old site I moved to WP as a platform without even changing any URLs.