Star rating doesn’t work

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    Hello, I am trying to use the ‘star rating’ widget included in WordPress and it shows alright but doesn’t work, stars don’t do anything when clicking. What’s wrong?

    WP.com: Yes
    Jetpack: No
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    Actually, my problem is not in apologia21.com, there I have star rating which came with the theme, and it works alright. I mean the widget available when inserting blocs in Gutemberg. I even tried inserting a ready-made “pattern” also included in Gutemberg, and that prefab page came with the star rating and all, but still, the stars wouldn’t work either, so I don’t think there a problem with the design itself, seems rather like I’m missing something on my site, something lacking in configuration, or something. This is the widget I mean: https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/ratings-block/

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    I think I know what the problem might be. Maybe that widget is not meant for users to rate my articles but simply for me to rate something and show it, so it’s not interactive. In that case, how can I get an interactive star-rating for my free WordPress site? withouth upgrading, I mean. I cannot install other widgets either, since upgrading is necessary for that. Still, on my other site I do have interative star-rating, so does it depend on the theme you choose? I have “Twenty Twenty-Tree”.

  • synora10 · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    The Ratings Block can be used to rate anything. Your theme, Fresh and Clean, is a retired one. The Twenty Twenty-Three theme on your other site is an active theme and supports the block editor.

    We have retired a number of themes from our theme collection that do not support the block editor, and therefore do not deliver a good experience to our customers. The Fresh and Clean theme was one of them. The Ratings Block is a feature of our block editor.

    Since you are used to the Twenty Twenty-Three theme (a free theme) on your other site, that would be a great one to switch https://apologia21.com/ to.

    It also appears your other site is an English version of https://apologia21.com/. We have a tutorial on creating a multilingual site with two sites at https://wordpress.com/support/set-up-a-multilingual-blog/#option-3-two-sites.

    You mentioned that you didn’t want to upgrade, do you mind sharing why? Upgrading to one of our paid plans unlocks more features. For example, our Premium theme will give you more theme options via the premium theme selection. You’ll also have access to advanced design customization, and the ability to monetize the site and remove ads. Our plans come with monthly and annual payment options:

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    Hi Sinora10, thanks for replying.

    You’re right, I should change Fresh and Clean for 20-23, but I fear making that change would cause lots of things to stop working or go amiss and find myself spending days on end again to get it up and about again. But the biggest put-off is the idea of losing the star-rating I have there, I need to have a guide and know people’s reaction to my articles or I’ll go on forever talking to myself ignoring if my message is driven home or lost in the ether.

    Also about that new site, the theme is Twenty Twenty-Three, being a theme created by WordPress I just thought it would be supported and upgraded forever so I wouldn’t be forced to change themes every few years since moving from 20-23 to 20-24 etc will be as smooth as silk, right?

    If I understand you correctly, the star-rating widget included in my 20-23 theme can be used for the webmaster to rate things, but not for users to rate things, so it’s of no use for me. I have installed the thumb-up/down widget which comes with Gutenberg, but still it depends on signal-something and when it reaches about 1000 interactions it stops working, so it’s only a patch.

    You asked, I explain. Yes, things would change a lot if I upgrade to a premium plan, but that’s not an option for me. To cut a long story short, I’ve been running websites for decades and have spent far too much on it (so much for giving it all for free). Now I run 8 sites in different platforms, as well as my own freestanding website, and if I allowed myself to spread so much is under the idea that I would run all the extra ones for free. Simply paying €4/month would mean adding another €384 a year on top of my present web expenses. Working for free can be rewarding, but spending money to work for free is going to the next level, and multiplying that would be just crazy. That’s why I don’t plan to go premium or anything.

    So, the star-rating widget in 20-23 can’t be used by my users to rate my articles, right? Please, confirm.

    My deprecated theme Fresh and Clean is more primitive but it came with a star-rating widget users could use, why a new and better theme is lacking that old tool? (rhetorical question). If I move to the 20-23 theme I’ll lose that tool, so I’ll stay with F&C even though it’s clearly much worse, and I’d very much prefer to have both versions of my same site with the same theme, but can’t lose my stars…

    I found two other widgets/blocs to gauge readers’ response: vote and applause, both powered by crowdsignal. The problem with that is that after about 1000 reactions they stop working, so it’s only a temporary patch. Really? After all the improvements WordPress has made there’s no bloc with a rating we can use? That may be a good reason to look for a different platform in the future.

    Thank you for your link to info about creating bilingual pages.

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Thanks for clarifying. The ratings (voting) functionality of your classic theme is something that used to be more common but has less prominence in site designs these days. I suspect this is due to the shift toward social feedback (in the form of likes and social media sharing) but you are correct that the Vote Block would be the modern substitute for this functionality: https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/blocks/vote-block/

    It is possible to add the classic vote functionality via shortcode as well, you can see how this is done here:

    WP
    Ratings Shortcode
    in WordPress.com Support
    1 min read
    You can add ratings to your posts and pages with the Crowdsignal rating shortcode, which will look something like this in your content: 💡 Use Ratings when you want your readers to rate something. If you wish to choose the rating (such as for your review of a movie or restaurant for example), use the Ratings block. First, log into your Crowdsignal account by clicking on the

    There is a Shortcode Block you can use to add the above code so you can display it on individual blog posts. Note that this adds the classic functionality (so visitors can interact with it) rather than the Ratings Block, which is something you might use if you were a film critic and wanted to display a rating next to your review of a recent movie.

    As you hav mentioned, the above shortcode is powered by your Crowdsignal account, and has a limit of 2500 “signals” or votes in this case. It is possible to remove that limit by upgrading your Crowdsignal account.

    That said, you are welcome to continue using this theme on your site. It is not possible to use it on new sites (since it is retired) but we do not forcibly remove it from your current site. Just a note to avoid changing themes on the site unless you are sure you want to switch. If you activate a new theme you will not be able to re-activate the old retired theme. But as long as you make no changes it will continue to stay on the site.

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    Thanks for your reply, it helped me to see things more clearly.

    I tried opening a free Crowdsignal account to see it working before deciding on upgrading. It was a disaster, I kept getting errors all the time, when I finally inserted the code into my site it looked awful and didn’t work, so I finally deleted my account. After thinking hard about it I have decided to upgrade my theme to keep both sites with the same look, and I’ll forget about rating. Togh decision, but keeping both sites with the same look is a priority if I want users to feel they are alternating between pages and not between sites. Besides, staying behind with old themes will make me miss many things and sooner or later that position would be untainable anyway.

    Thanks again

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    So I changed my legacy theme (Clean & Fresh) to Twenty Twenty-Three. Easier than I feared. Nevertheless something very strange happened.

    In my former theme I had star-rating included for each article. 20-23 doesn’t have star-rating, as we were commenting before. The thing is that when I open my articles in Firefox, which also happens to be the browser where I am logged in, I see the new theme layout but I still find the old star-rating at the beginning of the article (I used to have it at the end), workable and showing the same number of votes it had, so it is the same widget and it is still working, which is totally awsome (remember I was very reluctant to change themes just because I didn’t want to lose my star-rating widget!!).

    I opened the article in Chrome and the star-rating is also there (but in Chrome I’m also logged in). I opened in in Chrome but an incognito window (so no logged in) and it still shows. It shows also in Edge, though not in Edge in-private window.

    Anyway, it seems to be working just fine in every sense, and I don’t want it to disappear!!

    But I’d like to know if there’s something I can do about this:

    The stars appear at the beginning of the article, which doesn’t make much sense, since people shouldn’t rate an article before reading it, and when they finish reading it (my articles are long) they have completely forgot about the star-rating possibility. I’d like to move it at the end of the article, as I had them in my previous theme.

    Also I’d like to insert that rating in the home page, under every article extract, since half the use of having star-rating is guiding the readers about article popularity, though this wouldn’t be a priority.

    The thing is that the starts appear inside the article pages but there is nowhere I can find how to move the widget as I wish. The stars don’t appear in the template used by the articles, nor anywhere else, so the system just embeded this widget and there’s nothing I can do to move it or even deleted if I wanted to!!

    Please, WordPress, don’t delete it, but show me how I can at least move it to the end of the article’s text.

  • staff-95percentghost · Staff ·

    Hi! I’m happy to hear the ratings are still appearing as you want. You can also find the recent ratings on your blog posts in the Feedback > Ratings section of your site, which is on this page for you:
    https://apologia21.wordpress.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=ratings

    From the above link, if you choose the ‘Settings’ button, then you will find some settings for the ratings, including the position! This allows you to choose to have the ratings appear at the end of the blog posts. Feel free to test it and let us know if you have trouble with it!

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    Awesome, thanks, that was really helpful. I managed to move the rating stars at the end of my posts, as I wanted!! Now a few more things.

    I have a Spanish site and an English site (translation of the first) in my account, so they are two separate sites interconnected by linking but separate in every way, I thought, except that I see that some of the general settings are in fact shared. In the settings of rating you can translate all the messages and labels (vote, this week, thanks, etc) into Spanish, so I did in my Spanish backend or desktop or whatever. Problem is that I go to my English site desktop and I find it all translated into Spanish too! I guess that has no solution, if both sites share some common things.

    Now the rating stars show in all my pages and posts in the Spanish site, but not in the English site. Since I just saw that both sites share the rating configuration, because they belong to the same account, I’m sure it is technically possible to make the stars visible in the English site too. In the rating settings I found an ID for the widget. I tried inserting in my templates the shorcode block for rating using that ID as the number, something like this: [crowdsignal rating=xxxxxxx], in the hope that that ID was the number needed there. But it didn’t work. Not only I can’t get the stars showing in my English site, but also I can’t get them showing on my homepage of my Spanish site. I’d like to show the stars under every post thumbnail as they show in the homepage (just as I had it before changing themes), but since I’m using a new template for the homepage, the stars are nowhere to be seen (though I’m also using a new template for the posts and they do show the stars). Anyway, I suppose the same problem which is preventing the rating from showing in the Spanish home page is also preventing it from showing in the English site in general.

    I hope I made myself understood. So is there a way I can get a code for the widget I already have so I can use it and insert it in other places where it is not showing?

    Thanks in advance

  • jmills39 · Staff ·

    Hello there,

    I have a Spanish site and an English site (translation of the first) in my account, so they are two separate sites interconnected by linking but separate in every way, I thought, except that I see that some of the general settings are in fact shared. In the settings of rating you can translate all the messages and labels (vote, this week, thanks, etc) into Spanish, so I did in my Spanish backend or desktop or whatever. Problem is that I go to my English site desktop and I find it all translated into Spanish too!

    Do you mean in the back end only of the English site? In that case, it would be expected because the interface language is controlled by your profile language:
    https://wordpress.com/support/language-settings/#interface-language

    Not only I can’t get the stars showing in my English site, but also I can’t get them showing on my homepage of my Spanish site

    As far as the ratings not showing on the English site, I see that the settings are not enabled yet for that here:
    https://englishapologia21.wordpress.com/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=ratings&action=options&rating=posts

    You could try inserting a shortcode in the Index template for the Spanish site homepage, which controls the home page. However, it’s quite uncommon to show a rating on a home page, other pages, or posts on modern sites unless it’s for service or product ratings.

    What’s the main goal of showing the star rating throughout your site? Is it to encourage people to read articles and pages?

    So is there a way I can get a code for the widget I already have so I can use it and insert it in other places where it is not showing?

    Here is information on getting the shortcode:
    https://wordpress.com/support/ratings/

    Have a nice day!

  • apologia21 · Member ·

    Thanks a lot, that was really helpful. I managed to activate the rating in both sites now. You’re right, having the rating on the homepage is not useful. Still, I’d like to have access to a list where I could see the rating my articles get, without having to open and scroll each at a time, but oh well, nothing’s perfect.

    I don’t understand why the settings for the rating is not an option showing in my backend menu, under settings. I could manage it thanks to the link you offered though.

    Also, in the settings, in “advanced”, at the end there is an ID for the rating widget. I tried using that ID with the shortcode following the instructions you linked to, but it doesn’t work. Also, using crowdsignal rating has a limit of 25000 uses, then it stops working (unless you pay). I suspect the rating I’m using now belongs to crowdsignal because the setting options are exactly the same, so I guess my days for rating are numbered anyway.

    Thanks again

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