WP Movie Ratings is a WordPress plugin perfect for movie fans who like to let the world know their opinion on what they’ve been watching. At its core is a bookmarklet, which combined with Internet Movie Database and a little bit of AJAX magic lets you rate movies with just one click. Also, there is no need to write the title of the movie as it is automatically fetched from imdb. Optionally, you can also write a short review for each movie. The output from this plugin is a list of recently watched movies, which you can put anywhere you want (it is a WordPress widget). Check out the live demo.
The published movie reviews are hReview compliant.
Latest stable version (for WordPress 2.8+): 1.8 (tar.gz, zip) (2019-10-13).
The current development version can be found at github.
Screenshots
Recently watched movies list:
Bookmarklet in action (one click movie rating):
Requirements
- WordPress 2.8+
- FTP, SSH or SCP access to your wordpress blog (so you can upload this plugin).
Installation
- Download the plugin.
- Extract the contents of the .tar.gz/.zip file into the WordPress plugins directory (usually
wp-content/plugins). Alternatively you can upload them using ftp. You should have a new directory there called wp_movie_ratings (just along the akismet directory). - Activate the plugin by going into your administration panel and selecting Plugins from the menu and clicking the Activate button for the WP Movie Ratings.
- Go to the Manage section in the administration panel and see the new Movies menu option there (you’ll find the bookmarklet there too). Rate at least one movie (using the bookmarklet or the administration page).
- Go to the settings section in the administration panel and under the Movies tab customize this plugin’s options.
- Customize your theme by adding a new Widget to its sidebar called “Movie Ratings”.
- Make a new page listing all your movie reviews by adding a new page in WordPress with this as its content:
[[ wp_movie_ratings_page]]. - Go to your blog and see the movie ratings! :)
Upgrading
- Download the newest version of the plugin.
- Go to the Plugins section of the administration panel and deactivate the WP Movie Ratings plugin. Don’t worry as it will never ever delete any movie ratings.
- Go to the wp_movie_ratings plugins directory and delete all of the plugin files (should be
wp-content/plugins/wp_movie_ratings). It will not delete any movie ratings (those are saved in the database). Be aware though, that if you’ve made any changes to the plugin, you might consider doing a backup. - Extract the contents of the .tar.gz/.zip file into the wp_movie_ratings directory (
wp-content/plugins/wp_movie_ratings). - Go to the Plugins section of the administration panel and activate the WP Movie Ratings plugin (notice that higher version number of the plugin). The deactivation/activation cycle is required because of the new options that need to be written into the wordpress database (during activation).
- Enjoy life with the newest version of the WP Movie Ratings plugin!
FAQ
How can I have the ratings box displayed right after the first post?
Assuming you want to have movie ratings displayed on the front page of your blog, edit the index.php file. Find the line similar to this one:
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
Change it so it looks like this:
<?php $first_post = true; ?> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
And then, inside the while loop find this line:
<?php endwhile; ?>
and make it look like this:
<?php if ($first_post) wp_movie_ratings_show(); $first_post = false; ?> <?php endwhile; ?>
And that should do it.
How can I create a separate page listing all of my movie reviews?
Create new WordPress page by selecting Write Page in the Write menu option of the administration panel and put this line as the page content:
[[ wp_movie_ratings_page]]
How to I make the imdb link open in a new window?
Open movie.class.php and change this line:
$o .= "<a class=\"url fn\" href=\"";
to
$o .= "<a class=\"url fn\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"";
What to do when the rating box is too wide?
Wrap the plugin function call in a fixed width <div>, like that:
<div style="width: 200px"> <?php wp_movie_ratings_show(); ?> </div>
Your plugin is not working! All I get are (EmptyReference!) errors!
Stop using Adobe GoLive! as it is utter evil.
The bookmarklet is not working! Help!
Currently the bookmarklet works in Mozilla Firefox, Camino and WebKit. No IE, sorry.
Check if your blog’s home address is the same as your wordpress installation. If it is not (for instance when your website’s address is example.com and there sits your wordpress installation, but your blog is located at blog.example.com), then using this bookmarklet is not possible as that kind of AJAX calls are regarded as XSS and are blocked by Firefox (by default). You need to mess with your wordpress installation for it to work.
I’m using the Markdown plugin and I cannot create a movie ratings page!
Instead of writing:
[[ wp_movie_ratings_page]]
try
<!--wp_movie_ratings_page-->
and if that still does not work for you, wrap the call in a <p> tag, like this:
<p><!--wp_movie_ratings_page--></p>
or like this:
<p>[[ wp_movie_ratings_page]]</p>
How can I have the reviews shown when in page mode but hidden while in sidebar mode?
Go into settings in the administration panel and set all of the settings you want to have for the page mode. For the sidebar mode execute the following php code:
<?php wp_movie_ratings_show(6, array("sidebar_mode" => "yes", "include_review" => "no")); ?>
The first parameter of the wp_movie_ratings_show() function is the number of latest movie reviews to show. The second is the array of additional display options (all are optional). Here is the list of all the options you can set (hash array):
text_ratings– text ratings (like 5/10) instead of the stars,include_review– include review with each movie rating,expand_review– initially display expanded reviews when in page mode,sidebar_mode– compact view for sidebar mode,five_stars_ratings– display movie ratings using 5 stars instead of 10,highlight– will highlight the stars of top rated movies,page_mode– display all movie ratings on a separate page,page_url– link to the movie reviews page,char_limit– will cut any character in the title after this number,only_not_rated– will select only not yet rated movies (‘yes’/’no’),only_rated– will select only already rated movies (‘yes’/’no’),order_by– default sort (valid only when used with combination of either ‘only_rated’ or ‘only_not_rated’) (‘title’/’rating’/’watched_on’),order_direction– default sort direction (valid only when used with combination of either ‘only_rated’ or ‘only_not_rated’) (‘ASC’/’DESC’).
Other questions?
Just ask.
License
Released and available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.
Known bugs
- Bugs? What bugs?
TODO
v2.0 plans:
- Convert movie ratings from separate database table to normal posts and assign custom tag to hide them from normal content (similarly to the sideblog plugin). Doing this will give us: integrated search for already rated movies, RSS feeds, comments under reviews, permalinks to each review.
- Automatically fetch movie covers from amazon, fetch director, cast, rating, movie language from imdb (when adding a new review).
- Automatic updates through the WordPress plugin administration panel.
Post v2.0 plans:
- Use static methods of Movie class, like Movie::get_watched_movies_count() instead of what I’m doing currently (tested; works in PHP 4.4.x).
- Different color schemes/images for different blog backgrounds (white/black/transparent) using different CSS selectable via panel option.
- Dynamic graph chart showing the votes breakdown.
- Automatic voting on imdb.
- Amazon links ($$).
- Bookmarklet working in Internet Explorer.
- Implement vote history import from imdb.com (and somehow solve the watched_on problem as imdb doesn’t tell when the movie was rated).
- Expand on the concept of this plugin being a general rating plugin, which will let you rate books and music too.
- Implement multiple users ratings (for multi-author websites).
- Automatically collect the movies you saw each month/week and post them on the blog.
Changelog
2015-11-19
- full compatibility with WordPress 4.4+.
- widgetization: added possiblity to display ‘Recent ratings’ in a widget
- fetch original movie titles from IMDb (ie: use akas.imdb.com instead of just imdb.com) and display links to akas.imdb.com (instead of imdb.com)
- fixed: make movies page pagination links XHTML standards compliant (& => &)
- compatibility/deprecation fixes (some of them at least…)
- release 1.7.
2010-10-14
- full compatibility with WordPress 2.7.*, 2.8.*, 2.9.* and 3.0.*.
- fixed: when ‘only_rated’ or ‘only_unrated’ option was used the ‘count’ argument the for wp_movie_ratings_show() function was ignored.
- removed automatic pingerati.net pinging (pingerati.net is AWOL).
- fixed: fetching movie title from IMDb (after IMDb has changed their website).
- release 1.6.
2008-05-18
- added option to add movies without rating them (only through the administration panel) (to create a list of owned just not yet seen dvds, for example).
- added option to select all ‘only_rated’ or ‘only_not_rated’ movies using the wp_movie_ratings_show() function call.
- char_limit option can now be passed as a parameter to the wp_movie_ratings_show() function call.
- fixed problems making the movie reviews pages non XHTML compliant.
- fixed error which prevented certain users from activating the plugin (the database table was not created).
- fixed XHTML validation error in the bookmarklet.
- release 1.5.
2006-11-18
- fixed lots of rendering issues (problems in IE, Blue-k2 theme, Golden Gray theme, reviews not expanding, etc.).
- completely rewritten encoding module, so now international characters as well as HTML should work correctly.
- fix for Markdown markup – you can now use the alternate tag:
<!--wp_movie_ratings_page-->to create a movie ratings page. - new feature: if no imdb link is given, the plugin will not look for the movie’s title on imdb. As a drawback, there can be now movies without imdb links (and without titles…).
- new feature: ability to edit imdb links for already rated movies.
- new feature: added pagination in page mode (so movie reviews can now span among several pages).
- added option to disable pingerati.net pinging.
- added option to highlight top rated movies.
- added link from the recently rated movies list to the page with all movie ratings.
- movies are now grouped together by month when sorting by view date in page mode.
- added default movies sorting options for page mode.
- added a new database field with optional link that is used instead of imdb.
- added option to initially display expanded reviews in page mode.
- added ability to edit movies directly from the displayed ratings list (in page mode too).
- release 1.4.
For previous changes check out the changelog file within the plugin’s archive.
Got the same ‘not logged in’ error. Tried every trick listed on this site. Can’t get it to work with bookmarklet, otherwise it’s working fine. Anyone have a solution?
Hi Paul – thank you for this plugin.
My question concerns editing entries.
I am using WP 2.7 and wp_movie_ratings 1.5.
1) I do not have a separate link/tab within my WP admin for managing/editing movies, only one link “Movies” under Tools for adding new movies and one link “Movies” under Settings which goes to the options/preferences page.
2) When I click on the Edit link for a specific movie in my list (in the generated list of movies), the href is
http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?page=wp_movie_ratings_management&action=edit&id=136or whatever movie entry number,but is redirected to
http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/tools.php?page=wp_movie_ratings_management, which presents the Add new movie rating screen, not the editing entry screen.(This last URL is the one used while I’m in the Add new movie screen in WP admin, which gives a list of 20 most recently added movies to edit.)
Any thoughts on what to try to get the Edit link in the generated list to work, to actually go to the specific movie’s entry for editing?
Your help is very much appreciated!
I too have the ‘not logged in’ error. Paul, you might be occupied by other work, but it would be greatly appreciated if you could put out a new version which is compatible with 2.7. If not for me, do it for your other hundreds of users. Thanks in advance.
Hi: Thanks for this plug-in. This is probably a dumb question but it only allows reviews written by the blog owner. Is this correct? I am looking for one that allows my website visitors to post a review. Can someone let me know if this is possible with this plug-in? Thank you.
@Maria: this is correct. If you’d like your users to be able to review movies you’d need to add them to wordpress and give them some kind of administration rights.
thanks for sending me the update, Paul. works great.
For everybody who likes to create a custom RSS feed for this plugin (before it officially becomes available by it) I managed to create a simple one. If you like, take a look at the code template I created (as a plugin which must be installed one level up of this plugin, probably inside wordpress plugins root directory). You can take a look at its code here:
http://www.gozir.com/1387/11/28/wp-movie-ratings/#more-1404
You should modify it and adapt it to your own weblog configurations.
I too get the “not logged in” error and am using WordPress 2.7.1.
Could you send me that update Josdigital was speaking about, please?
Would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance :)
Hello.
First of all thank for this great plugin.
How to i make the movie link to imdb open in a new window?
Thanks.
Niklas,
you have to change line 389 in movie.class.php from
$o .= "<a class=\"url fn\" href=\"";to
$o .= "<a class=\"url fn\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"";Paul —
Is there any sort of timeline on when 2.0 will be released?
Joe: not really…
To anyone interested, you can find the latest version of the plugin in my github repository.
Hi Paul
First of all, awesome plugin. It’s excellent for people like me who love to watch any possible movie!
I had a question:
In my blog, where do I add the sidebar widget line so that it takes the CSS style of the widget? It’s not taking the style of the widgets and the text starts from the far left of the sidebar. Any way to get around that?
I am sure it’s very easy… I am not web-designing-literate enough to figure it out :(
@Kokonad: This plugin does not come as a widget and as such it can sometimes take some CSS styles from your theme. You just need to add some CSS rules to make it work with your theme.
Hi!
I was wondering, is it possible to have more than one instance of your plugin?
What I would like to do is split the list by genre as in having a list for Horror movies and another one for SciFi instead of having one global list. I have over 1500 movies and having a single list sin’t really all that great.
Can only admin add movies?
@Alain: that’s not possible. On a side note so far I’ve rated 940 movies and see no problem with that.
@Kenneth: correct.
Hey Paul —
Still using and still loving the plugin. I’m using WP2.7.1 w/ WP MR 1.5.1 and it’s great. I’m eagerly awaiting 2.0 and looking forward to seeing a multi-user version.
Hope all is going well and I will continue to watch for updates.
Cheers —
— Joe
I have problem with date format in the plugin. It display month in english, not Swedish as rest of WordPress does. I’m not shure on what to change in the plugin so it displays month in Swedish. What exactly do I change and to what?
With good help from Asbjørn I have fixed the problem with translating the name of the month to any local language. In the version 1.5 just open “wp_movie_ratings.php” and change line 354 – 374, see http://www.kennethjansson.net/movierate.htm for the code
An idea, just if you can do it:
It would be excellent if in description mode you could add a small version of the movie poster [from IMDB of course]. What do you say?
Thanks for the plugin. Here is mine – I added few modifications myself :D
http://www.iamchris.info/filme-vazute/ [romanian language]
@Cristian: it’s in the TODO list…
@Paul – great :)
Hey Paul, Artem here again.
Upgraded to the latest git version just now – everything is working but the saving process takes ages – like a minute for some reason, even though the movie appears in the db instantly. Bad Ajax somewhere?
@Artem: Yeah, I’m seeing it too. I blamed my host, but it seems that I need to blame WordPress now.
Paul, also re: ” # DROP THE UNIQUE INDEX (imdb_url_short) created in versions prior to 1.4 of this plugin so we have no problems while adding titles without imdb link”.
That is a pretty bad idea – I just found that I rated 3 movies twice. All you need to do to ensure titles without imdb_url_short get added and not duped is to allow NULL default value on that column. NULLs are not considered dupes in MySQL.
@Artem: I want to rate my movies twice. Triple times too. For those movies that I watch more than once I really like to know how I rated them before and now.
OK, Paul, makes sense kind of. In that case, it should warn you that you’ve already rated that movie. Does that sound fair?
@Artem: hmm… maybe. But it would probably only worked from the admin panel. I’ll write it down to do it some time.
Paul, you can send off an ajax request as soon as the user fills out the imdb info, then you can show the movie name right away, as well as do the check. Would make the plugin sleeker too.
@Artem: Truth is the admin panel is not really the right way to use the plugin. Bookmarklet is the way to go. Anyway, let’s move to email if you’d like to continue the discussion.
I noticed one comment about the translation of the name of months to any local language. However here suggested solution is not perfect. It’s would be better to use Wodpress localization functionality. The code would be something like that:
__(date(“F”), mktime(…));
@Artem: the deplay when adding a new movie rating or editing existing one has been eliminated (it was pinging the pingerati.net which is no more). Latest version on github.
hello Paul,
I just wanted to ask how the development of your plugin is coming along? I have been using it for more than 1 year, and I see no progress on your to-do list :-) which is not a complaint, please don’t take offense.
I jsut wanted to suggest another feature, as I found in the “now reading” plugin which deals with books as your plugin deals with movies. Its a feature to link a book/review to a post. this way, you wouldn’t have to incorporate that many features into your plugin, we could just link to a post that has a ful review of the movie including pictures and trailers?
Btw. is the reason for the slowness of the development the lack of time? I mean could we speed up things by donating?
@ovidiu: the problem is a little bit more complicated. The plugin in its current form satisfies my needs. PHP is ‘not my thing’ any more. I despise it. Same goes for WordPress as I find it way too bloated (and limited when it comes to plugins). Some $$ could help, but the userbase is too small to make any real $$ out of it, I think. I was (and still am) thinking about some hosted solution as a natural upgrade from wp_movie_ratings. It would allow you to have widget on your blog (like twitter/last.fm/etc.), listing your latest ratings, but your movies database would be kept on my server (just as it happens for last.fm/twitter). But there are existing solutions like this already out, plus I don’t see it as a viable business, so the development is kind of stalled.
I will maintain it to keep compatibility, though, so no worries here.
On the other hand you can always fork on github and send patches.
@Paul: thanks for the statement, at least we know roughly what is happening :-)
offtopic: if you don’t like WP and PHP anymore, what have you moved to? just out of curiosity…
@ovidiu: Ruby/Rails, of course.
@paul:
should have thought about that :-) btw. is there any cms or blogging system out there that runs on ruby/rails? Haven’t got much experience with that, just asking :-) and I am not asking from a developer’s perspective but from a consumer’s perspective :-)
@ovidiu: There’s Typo, but from customer’s perspective WordPress is the best, so I would stay with that. If you don’t mind, let’s switch to email, it’s offtopic now.
ok, no problem, and jsut on a side note, here is a how-to generate a movie database without a special plugin: excellent results! http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/06/04/using-custom-taxonomies-to-create-a-movie-database
So… basically you’re tired of WordPress and PHP and thus there will no real updates forthcoming?
Sad fishes. Looks like it’s time to find a new plugin.
Thanks for the plugin while it lasted.
Cheers.
@Paul: maybe you can find someone to take over the development? I am sure there are a couple of people out there who are using your plugin, someone might just be willing to take over.
i’m using your plugin til wordpress version 2.7
but seem it look not really working..then i chenged to other. can u continue develop it…
Movie Review for Word Press 8.2. Do you know when you will have an updated plug-in that will be conpatiable with Word Press 8.2
Debbie
Debbie do you mean wordpress 2.8? Hopefully this will work for 2.8! I am about to download it now. Thanks for the plugin!
What a very nice plugin this is!
I use a combination with IMDBtag to write reviews in a post and use the postlink as alternative link.
I ran into a problem tho: setting up a page for all archive reviews I don;t see the ‘e’ to edit reviews. Doesn’t really matter, if I could change all reviews from Adminpanel, but unfortunately this list is limited by 20 entries.
How can I change a review (get the ‘e’ visible on the archive review page)
for the record: sure I am logged in as admin :)
@Hart: I’d suspect you either block it on your site via your’s template CSS or by using Adblock.
@Debbie, Matt: it works under the latest WordPress v2.8.3. You just need to download the development version.
regarding the missing ‘e’.
I removed the usercheck in movie.class.php and now is shown, so maybe the admin-check is causing the problem.
Removing the second if-statement does show the ‘e’. I know this is not the way, but at least it gives me the option to edit rating entries.
/* # Edit link
if (!is_plugin_page()) {
$user = wp_get_current_user();
if ($user->ID && ($user->user_level >= 8)) {
$o .= “_id . “\”>e\n”;
}
That is sad that you’ve ended development, especially since the 2.0 features sounded so nice. Just to make a review as an actual post would be a huge step up.
It’s such a great plug-in, and really the only true movie review plug-in WordPress has. It will be a sad, sad day when it no longer works in an updated WP installation.
But perhaps by then someone will fork the code and continue development.