New version is here. But before I go into details about new release, I would like to introduce new page on this blog. As you might have noticed, there is a page called Calendar. This page shows my public calendars from Google Calendar. And this calendars will show release dates and other important events regarding blog, wordpress plugins and themes I am working on. You can add that events to your own Google Calendars as a reminder.

And now back to GD Star Rating plugin. As you will notice, a number of new features are added, many other are improved, and bugs are fixed. I know that there are few bugs left, but important thing now is that 90% of reported bugs are not bugs at all. I will refer you again to a wiki page I have added to Google Code project website (take a look at it here) with a list of things that can cause rating plugin to stop functioning. Please, go through this list before report a bug, as I said 90% of bugs are not actually plugin bugs.

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I have finally got a little time to update Starscape theme. This new version brings few small bugs fixed, and two new features. I have added direct integration support for GD Star Rating comment review rating, and support for upcoming WordPress 2.7 thread comment model. Also, I have made some changes to CSS and added classes for rendering image captions.

Next version will be released with WordPress 2.7, and will have more GD Star Rating features integrated, and also will improve on comment threading.

Last few weeks I have spend a lot of time fixing GD Star Rating bugs, and even more time trying to figure out bugs in other WordPress plugins. JavaScript code is very easy to break, and in most cases it will not going to affect the page rendering, only some of the elements.

People notice GD Star Rating stops functioning and they assume that the problem is with GD Star Rating. Rating is interactive feature and when it stops working, it is the first thing blog visitors see. But in most cases some other plugin uses JavaScript and when that stops working, all JavaScript stops working.

The best thing is to check each plugin you install on you blog to see if this plugin breaks something. To see JavaScript problems you need to have Mozilla Firefox borwser (version 2 or 3) and Firebug plugin. Firebug also have it’s own plugins like Firecookie. You can install that too.
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I have compiled a list of potential problems that can cause GD Star Rating to stop working. I will try to update this list as soon as I identify the problem that is not related to the plugin but with something else. List is located on the Wiki on Google Code project page:

http://code.google.com/p/gd-star-rating/wiki/PotentialVotingProblems

Please, if you have some problems with GD Star Rating, first check this list, and eliminate the problems listed before you post a comment or forum topic. I don’t have much free time, and this will help to avoid repeated anwsers to the same problems.

Also, check user guide, many useful things are listed there.

New version is here. First of all, I have fixed all bugs I have found related to rating rules. But, the most problems are coming from the fact that I have added some improvements with previous version that required for blog admins to review settings of the plugin and check if things are ok. Anyway, I have fixed things I have found so far to be problem.

So, please review the settings after updating plugin, check if things are set as they should be. If you still have problems, please use the forum and describe the problems in more details, include your settings (screenshots will work) so I can hunt the bugs. Also, check the user guide it’s very detailed.

This version includes some very important new features, and also partial implementation of features planned fo the future versions announced in roadmap for the plugin development. So, read on to find out what’s new.

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