Reviews page - relocate review text wrapper

[shags38]

Looking over the reviews "path", it does look like there could be some improvements applied to it, though some of that is dependent on the current implementation of showing only a portion of the total review for consistency and formatting.

Right now, it is hard coded to show only 100 characters of the review when shown in a "summary" fashion. Afterall, as someone reviewing reviews, the thought appears to be to show the "important" parts first: stars, the start of the review, when it was left and by whom. Those things could easily be used when looking over a product to see if more should be checked.

So the few things identified: if a product has one review, why not just show it in its entirety instead of at an intermediate level? OK, that makes sense and could be incorporated. This is like the admin setting to go directly to a product's information page if a category has only one product. (becomes questionable if even more settings should be incorporated into the admin, where I would guess there would be many that would say NO! No more settings... :) ). Then even if there were more than one review and all reviews were shown on that product's review page, the next issue is that even if the entire review were made visible (because it was less than 100 characters) then the read review button would still be displayed. Well, there are two competing aspects to that: the formatting (each review has the same layout on the page regardless the number of reviews) and that if all of the review has been displayed, then why offer an option to see it again elsewhere?

As to the location/relocation of the content on the product's info page. If the template is built off of the default files, then there should be an html block of text indicating the beginning and end of a "feature". This helps to keep code together associated with something being displayed.

In this case, the code block as provided in template_default (not the responsive template) path for the tpl_product_info_default.php file is:

<!--bof Reviews button and count-->
<?php
  if ($flag_show_product_info_reviews == 1) {
    // if more than 0 reviews, then show reviews button; otherwise, show the "write review" button
    if ($reviews->fields['count'] > 0 ) { ?>
<div id="productReviewLink" class="buttonRow back"><?php echo '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS, zen_get_all_get_params()) . '">' . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_REVIEWS, BUTTON_REVIEWS_ALT) . '</a>'; ?></div>
<br class="clearBoth" />
<p class="reviewCount"><?php echo ($flag_show_product_info_reviews_count == 1 ? TEXT_CURRENT_REVIEWS . ' ' . $reviews->fields['count'] : ''); ?></p>
<?php } else { ?>
<div id="productReviewLink" class="buttonRow back"><?php echo '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCT_REVIEWS_WRITE, zen_get_all_get_params(array())) . '">' . zen_image_button(BUTTON_IMAGE_WRITE_REVIEW, BUTTON_WRITE_REVIEW_ALT) . '</a>'; ?></div>
<br class="clearBoth" />
<?php
  }
}
?>
<!--eof Reviews button and count -->

Find that, and move it to the desired location, ideally not within another section's bof-eof tags. If such tags are not present, then would expect that if a comparison tool were used to compare your current file with one of the ZC default files it should become relatively clear where the code starts and stops for the reviews.

Also note that a similar change would likely be needed for the other product types that may be used...

Many thanks mc12345678 for your detailed response;

the code to which you refer is included in the responsive template - relocating its position on the page is doable as you explained - the problem is that the code is not designed to show a review, it is designed to show a button to go to a page with another button to go to the review :) - where the code shows

if ($flag_show_product_info_reviews == 1) {
    // if more than 0 reviews, then show reviews button; otherwise, show the "write review" button

for the purpose of showing the review on the actual product page it should say something like

if ($flag_show_product_info_reviews == 1) {
    // if 1 reviews or more, show reviews here, if 0 reviews, then show the "write review" button

... or something similar - as you know by now I am not a coder.

This Template was written by Anne from Picaflur Azul - in her own templates, such as Westminster New and others she incorporated the reviews on the particular product info page (I actually copied that code from the WN template and copied it into the responsive template in the delusional hope that it may work. The point of this is that components of the code used in the rendering of the reviews to the page 'may' be adaptable to the responsive code ??? - (i.e. how did she make it work) just a thought (rather than reinventing the wheel). I know you cannot answer this question - but I wonder why the very good, very workable reviews system she had developed for her other templates was not incorporated - it seems to be a one step forward, one step back situation. .... anyways .....

As to negating the unnecessary step - so it should be readily manageable - any clues on what needs to be done? From a customers viewpoint it is ludicrous going through so many steps, exactly what Google says is NOT best practice.

As to the 100 word limit for showing reviews - I don't see that on some of the more successful sites / platforms out there - where a review is posted it is usually in its entirety - other than in sideboxes but very few indeed use sideboxes these days in modern templates (more page segments - on page text boxes) - so I'm puzzled as to the necessity for this - I don't see the need myself.

So, given that I am not a coder, in a nutshell;
1. if the reviews code be readily modified to show the reviews in their entirety on the page .... how can this be achieved?
2. if the unnecessary page can be readily negated ..... how can this be achieved?

cheers,
Mike