Well, laste few days I have received a lot of emails and there was a discussion in the forum and on this blog about the features for GD Star Rating plugin. So, I have decided to slow down with new version, and instead I will do a rewrite on some parts of the plugin to add new things, and to make possible easier expansion for the future versions.

So, the planned 0.8.0 Beta will not be released befoe all these things are done. But, the most important thing is to make a list of the things that will be changed. If you are interested in these features, please continue reading.
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New version is ready. This one will hopefully fix duplicate voting, header sent error message and few other small errors. I have tested it last two days on different blogs, with WordPress 2.5.1 and WordPress 2.6, and so far I couldn’t find any problem. If you still getting errors, please report it in the forum and add exact error you get along with version of WordPress you are using.

This version has working widget. There is still work to be done, but for now widget supports multiple instances, and you can add as many differently set rating widgets in sidebars as you want. For now you will have a list with rating displayed.

Also, shortcode support is expanded, new options are added into TinyMCE3 plugin settings and now you can have rating displayed with stars. You can see the example on the screenshot on the right.

Next version will be availbe in the next few days with some changes to widget and control panel.

Well, new version is now available. This one has some important bugs fixed including the bug that allow duplicate posting with page refresh after voting. Stars can now be GIF or JPG. There is a problem with older IE (5.5 and 6.0) that can’t render transparent PNG’s. So, you can create stars in GIF with regular 1bit transparency. I have included one stars style with GIFs.

Most important new feature is shortcode support that will alow you to add ratings table into your posts. Also, there is a tinymce button that can help you generate shortcode using simple popup form like any other tinymce plugin. Generated table uses default CSS style, but you can change this to any style you want. CSS template for this table is included and you can either change this file or create another one similar.

Next version will have working widget and user guide. Translation support is also still in works.

Thanx for all suggestions and bug reports, and as always don’t hesitate to ask for a feature. I will see what I can add in the future releases. And again, plugin is still in development phase, so there are still errors. Please report any error you find.

There is one more problem with multiple votes, but this one is not that offten and is caused by slow response from server. This will be fixed with next version.

And, again new version. I have added different star styles and sizes. Also, I have completed administrative page that displays all voting statistics for posts and pages. Bug with cookie saving also is fixed. I have added some screenshots for the plugin. Bug again, best way to test it is to download it and try it for yourself.

Finally I had enough time to continue working on the star rating plugin, and here is the first, still alpha version you might wanna try. Currently plugin allows you to set up voting system. All votes are saved into database, so when you update plugin in the following days, all votes will be saved.

Plugin has protection against search spiders. Also, votes are saved based on user id if user is logged in, or visitors ip and cookie if not. You can set if you would like to allow non users to vote or not.

There are still a lot of things missing. I am planning to add sidebar widget, voting control and statistics and new stars styles. So, you can see how the plugin looks like on this blog, and I hope you like it. And, all suggestions and comments are welcome.