PlexRate – Smart Star Ratings Wordpress Plugin - Rating, Reviews, Demo & Download
Plugin Description
PlexRate – Smart Star Ratings lets your visitors rate anything on your website: a page, a post, a product, a service, a recipe or any section of a page. Drop a shortcode where you want the rating to appear. It works in Elementor, Gutenberg, WPBakery, Divi and the classic editor, because it is a plain WordPress shortcode.
The plugin also outputs AggregateRating structured data (JSON-LD) so your rating can be eligible for Google review stars in search results. Google decides whether to show them (see the FAQ).
Main features
- One shortcode for everything:
[plexrate]works on any page, post or custom post type. - Independent ratings on one page: give each rating its own
idand its votes stay separate. - Optional text reviews: a separate
[plexrate_review]shortcode adds a feedback box next to the stars.[plexrate]alone never shows it. - Reviews list:
[plexrate_reviews]shows visitor reviews in a card grid. - Google Rich Snippets (JSON-LD): 14 schema types with a ready-made template for each, and an editable template box if you need extra fields.
- Schema only with real votes: structured data is output only when at least one vote exists, never as a placeholder.
- Automatic display: optionally add the rating at the top or bottom of every post and/or page, and skip individual posts with a checkbox in the editor.
- Icon styles: star, heart, thumb or any custom emoji, with live preview, size, gap, colours, alignment and RTL support.
- Negative Rating Alert: when someone picks a low rating, they see a message and a contact link first, so they can reach you before posting it. They can still submit anyway.
- Anti-spam protection: honeypot field, per-IP hourly rate limit, nonce checks and one vote per visitor.
- Works behind Cloudflare: the real visitor IP is read from the Cloudflare header, and the forwarded-for header is trusted only when the request really comes from Cloudflare’s published IP ranges.
- Guest or logged-in voting: allow everyone, or require login.
- Minimum votes before display: hide the average (and the schema) until enough votes are in.
- Ratings Data screen: see every rating, export all votes to CSV and reset the votes of a single rating.
- Shortcode builder: build and copy shortcodes from the settings page.
- Translation ready: all strings use the
plexrate-smart-star-ratingstext domain.
Shortcodes
Basic rating
[plexrate]
By default the rating is tied to the current page or post.
Independent ratings (give each its own id)
[plexrate id="logo-design" title="Logo Design Service"]
[plexrate id="web-design" title="Web Design Service"]
Rating with a review box
[plexrate_review id="logo-design"]
The same id shares the same votes, so the stars and the review box can sit in different places.
Show visitor reviews
[plexrate_reviews id="logo-design" limit="6"]
Attributes for [plexrate] and [plexrate_review] (all optional)
id: your own short name for the rating. Letters, numbers and hyphens.title: the name used in the schema markup. Defaults to the page title.type: schema type, for exampleProduct,Recipe,SoftwareApplication.shape:star,heart,thumboremoji.size: icon size in pixels.color: colour of the filled icons, for example#f5a623.count: number of icons (cannot exceed the setting).align:left,centerorright.
Privacy and data storage
PlexRate – Smart Star Ratings stores data in two custom database tables on your own site:
- For each vote: the rating, the rating
id, the date, the visitor’s IP address, a hashed fingerprint (a one-way hash of the IP address, the browser user agent and a site-specific salt) and, if you enable text reviews, the review text the visitor typed. - For rate limiting: the visitor’s IP address and the time of each vote attempt.
The hashed fingerprint is used to allow one vote per visitor. IP addresses are used for spam protection. No data is sent to any external service or to the plugin authors. The settings page contains a link to Google’s Rich Results Test; it only opens Google’s website when you click it.
Because IP addresses can count as personal data in some countries, please mention this in your site’s privacy policy. You can delete the stored votes of any rating from the Ratings Data screen. If you turn on On Uninstall in the Advanced tab, all plugin tables and settings are removed when the plugin is deleted.
Screenshots
No screenshots provided
