RIACO Reviews – Customer Reviews & Testimonials

Yes, RIACO Reviews is completely free and open source under the GPLv2 or later licence.

Yes. The plugin registers a native Gutenberg block (riaco-reviews/reviews-block) with a live server-side preview in the editor. All display settings are in the Inspector sidebar — no shortcode needed when using the block editor.

Yes. Use [riaco_reviews] in any post, page, widget area, or PHP template. All the same options available in the block are available as shortcode attributes.

Go to Reviews > Add New in the WordPress admin. Enter the review headline as the post title and the review text as the main content. Use the Review Details meta box to set the author name, avatar, star rating, review date, and a link to the original source. Assign a Source (platform) and a Product from the sidebar dropdowns.

Go to Reviews > Sources and add a new source. Upload a logo image using the Logo / Image field — the WordPress media uploader is integrated. SVG files are supported for source logos. The logo will appear in the card header (Default and Modern styles) or as text in the Minimal style.

Three styles are available:

• Default — white card with a drop shadow; header row shows the review title and source logo side by side.
• Modern — compact header combines the author avatar, name, date, and a compact star rating in one row; the footer splits the product badge and source link.
• Minimal — large bold title, no avatar or source logo, stars use the text colour, author name links to the source URL.

Yes. From the block editor Inspector sidebar, open the Card Colours or Typography panel to set card background, text, border, star, and product badge colours, as well as font size and line height. The same options are available as shortcode attributes. All values are injected as CSS custom properties on the wrapper element so they scope to that specific block instance.

Yes. Both the Grid and Masonry layouts use CSS auto-fill / column-width with a configurable minimum card width (default 300 px). Columns are added or removed automatically based on the available container width — no fixed breakpoints are used.

Yes. Every field has an individual show/hide toggle — available both in the block editor Inspector sidebar and as shortcode attributes (show_avatar, show_date, show_rating, etc.). For example, to hide the review date: [riaco_reviews show_date="0"].

Yes. Set orderby="rating" in the shortcode or choose By rating in the block editor Sort Order panel. You can also sort by date (newest or oldest first) or random.

Go to Reviews > Products and create a product entry for each product or subject. When editing a review, select the appropriate product from the Product dropdown in the sidebar. The product name appears as a pill badge on the card.

Yes. Use the product attribute in the shortcode — pass the product slug (the URL-friendly version of the product name): [riaco_reviews product="my-plugin"] For multiple products (show reviews matching any of them), pass a comma-separated list: [riaco_reviews product="plugin-one,plugin-two"] In the block editor, open the Display Settings panel and choose a product from the Filter by Product dropdown. Selecting "— All Products —" removes the filter.

Yes, using the riaco_reviews_query_args filter. This gives you access to the full WP_Query args array before the query runs — add taxonomy queries, post__in, meta queries, or any other WP_Query parameter. Example: add_filter( 'riaco_reviews_query_args', function( $args, $atts ) { $args['tax_query'] = [ [ 'taxonomy' => 'riaco_review_product', 'field' => 'slug', 'terms' => 'my-product' ] ]; return $args; }, 10, 2 );

Yes. The plugin automatically outputs schema.org Review structured data in the page footer for every review rendered by a block or shortcode. No configuration is required — the data is picked up by Google and other search engines automatically. To get the most out of rich results, go to Reviews → Products, edit each product, and set:

• Product / Subject URL — the canonical URL of the thing being reviewed (e.g. your plugin's WordPress.org listing page).
• Schema.org Type — the type of thing being reviewed. Use Product for physical or digital products, SoftwareApplication for apps and plugins, LocalBusiness for shops and services, etc. Leave it as Thing if unsure.

Yes. Use the riaco_reviews_card_template_path filter to return the path to your own PHP template file. The filter receives the default path, the card style slug, the post ID, and the meta array, so you can switch templates per style or per review.

No. Activation flushes the rewrite rules so the custom post type and taxonomies register correctly; deactivation flushes them again so the CPT slug is removed cleanly. No custom database tables are created. All review data is stored as standard WordPress post meta.

The plugin loads its CSS only on pages where the block or shortcode is present (wp_enqueue_block_style and on-demand shortcode enqueueing). The block uses server-side rendering, so no JavaScript is loaded on the frontend. All images use the loading="lazy" attribute.

Yes. All user-facing strings are wrapped in WordPress i18n functions and the text domain is riaco-reviews. A .pot file is included in the languages/ directory.