I'm a vBulletin admin about to convert to Xenforo and working on a test install. I was torn between creating our own system and trying your add-on, but decided to give your XenCentral Feedback System 2 a try. Our primary concerns are security, system performance/load , and then user experience (probably in that order). Here are some initial observations (mostly trying to avoid the first two concerns here) after playing around with the system for 4 hours this morning.
OVERALL I wish you the best and hope that this add-on will be all that I and our users and other boards need. The add-on is nice and has some features I particularly appreciate, such as the ability to generate a feedback score based on transactions (default) or by unique people they have done business with (optional, but my preference). I'm not sure the add-as has 100% fully arrived from my perspective (security, performance, and user experience), but I think it's getting close, and hopefully with a little feedback of my own, it may get even closer.
BUG #1 (big one) - The module comes with an importer for vBulletin's iTrader. When it runs, it may stop because it doesn't like something with the data to be imported. When you run it again, it begins by "Deleting" the old data and then begins to import again. However, it only clears out table 'xf_xc_feedback_feedback' (ratings table) but FAILS to clear out 'xf_xc_feedback_comment'. Thus, every time you run the importer, the comment table just gets bigger and bigger with orphan records. [Advice to other existing users until fixed: manually clear but don't delete both tables if you have to restart the import. Or if you are long past that point, query MySQL to find orphan records in xf_xc_feedback_comment that you might be able to get rid of..]
BUG #2 (big one) - also with the importer. I discovered issue #1 because the importer stopped mid-way through an import with an error message: "Oops! We ran into some problems. Comment length should be at least 10 characters". So I checked in the SQL table and found one single comment with a 3 character length ("lol") and re-ran the import. The same error occurred again, even though I had confirmed no comments were less than 10 characters. It took some research, but I discovered the problem was that it apparently stripped out an entire 15 character comment due to surrounding punctuation on the comment. The iTrader comment was (between the quotes): "<wasting space>". Now it was interesting that it didn't accept '<' and '>' but then I noticed that it didn't just strip those symbols out (as 'wasting space' without the punctuation would still be well more than 10 characters). I think I'll stop on this one right now other than to ask you to take a closer look at the code for best practices and functionality and please address.
BUG #3 (or a suggestion) - well. I think this one is a bug, or maybe I'm missing something. When looking at a user’s profile and clicking on the ‘Feedback Stats’ tab, on the right side there are ‘Feedback Stats’ including a total Feedback Score # (100%), and # of positive, negative, and neutral. I sort of had hope that I would see extra info like what we had with vBulletin and iTrader, such as a 3x3 grid with positive/neutral/negative down the left hand side forming rows, and ‘Past Month’, ‘Past 6 Months’, and ‘Past 12 Months’ along the top forming columns. No such luck. However, there was a button underneath the stats labeled ‘Extended Stats’. When I click on it, it takes me to a page where I can generate a report on ‘Feedback Percentage Statistics’, and further down the page on ‘New Feedback Statistics’. Neither function does anything at all for me. Additionally, in the lower section, there is a checkbox for ‘Disable Flash’ that also does nothing for me. However, why is it even there? Flash died and was buried several years ago.
BUG #4 (again, unless I'm missing something) - Feedback scores that appear while viewing threads only appear when the page is viewed on a desktop browser. Using Xenforo's default template, they aren't appearing for me when I bring up the identical page on an iPhone.
SUGGESTION #1 (good idea)
I'd like to agree with Joe Link on his comment asking for a cleaner rating line (I'm assuming that is where it came from). The existing multi-color 'Feedback 100%, (72) (0) (0)' is overkill for my user base and the shorter & sweeter 'Feedback: X/X/X' would also be much gentler on precious mobile phone screen real estate (assuming Bug #4 above is addressed).
@XenCentral
Our members are really missing the X / X / X feedback display. Any chance we can get that option back?
View attachment 207797
SUGGESTION #2 (good idea)
When the importers die for a reason such as "Comment length should be at least 10 characters", it would be nice to know what record number upset it. A userid and/or comment id, or something to help identify why the importer was unhappy. I was able to figure out a record 7,000+ into the import process was the one that got it upset, but not every admin may have that technical ability.
SUGGESTION #3 (very minor)
When importing data, it provides an update to progress, with a single text line reading for example "Imported feedback - 599 Failed feedback - 0 Imported comments - 677 Failed comments – 0". At first glance it looked like it was saying (at that moment) that there were 599 Failed feedback records so far. The ' - ' visually breaks up the rest of the line. I'd suggest either putting a new line after each number, or changing the text to something like ""Imported feedback: 599 -- Failed feedback: 0 -- Imported comments: 677 -- Failed comments: 0" to make it easier to read.
SUGGESTION #4 (very minor)
When 'Updating User Ratings', it flashes 'Processing...' but otherwise gives no indication of progress. It would be nice if it gave some indication of progress, like your importer does.
SUGGESTION #5 (very minor)
In the General Options section, one has the ability to add 'Top Traders' and 'Untrusted Traders' to the 'Homepage blocks'. I turned it on and nothing happened for me. I was looking for this blocks on the Forum's home page. I'd suggest changing the wording 'Homepage blocks' to 'Feedback Homepage Blocks' or similar to make it clearer that the options affect a page under the Feedback tab, not the home page of the forum site.
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