Universal Reviews – Ratings, Review Forms, Google Reviews, Social-Proof

No. WooCommerce is not required. Reviews can target WordPress posts and custom post types, taxonomy terms, users, the site/business and other supported targets. WooCommerce products are supported as the product post type. Universal Reviews does not read WooCommerce orders for purchase verification. A moderator can mark a review as verified from the Reviews screen, and developers can add their own verification logic through the unirev_verification_providers filter.

Yes. The post target type can work with WordPress post types, including custom post types, when the target is public and supported by the plugin's target validation.

Yes. There are Elementor widgets for the Review Form, the Reviews List and (since 1.1.0) Google Reviews. Drag them onto any Elementor page, template or product layout. They share the same forms, review types and moderation queue as the blocks and shortcodes.

Yes. Elementor is optional. Universal Reviews also works with the WordPress block editor and with shortcodes, and you don't need a special theme.

Add [unirev_reviews show_form=1] to the page, insert the Reviews List block, or drop in the Reviews List widget in Elementor. Visitors will see the rating summary, the approved reviews and the review form.

WooCommerce products are supported as a review target. Add the shortcode, block or Elementor widget to your product description, product template or product layout. Universal Reviews doesn't take over the built-in WooCommerce reviews tab.

Yes. Reviewers can attach JPEG, PNG, WebP or AVIF photos, and you control the size and number of photos. SVG uploads are never accepted. Photos that can't be verified as real images are rejected, and photos are deleted when a review is rejected or marked as spam.

Yes. Use the business target type to collect reviews about your company as a whole, then show them anywhere with the same widgets, blocks and shortcodes.

Yes. The form builder supports multiple field types, required fields, half-width layouts, placeholders, help text, headings, text blocks and custom CSS classes. Form styling uses --unirev-* CSS variables.

Yes. Forms can be created and managed from Reviews → Forms. Forms can be associated with supported review types and embedded with the form shortcode or Review Form block.

Yes, since version 1.0.1. Choose Half stars under Star steps when editing a review type in Reviews → Review Types. Types default to whole stars (1 to 5).

Not by default. IP storage is disabled by default and can be enabled from the privacy settings when a site needs it.

Deactivation does not delete reviews, settings or database tables. Data is removed during uninstall only when Delete all data on uninstall has been enabled in Settings → Privacy.

No. Universal Reviews does not require Redis or Memcached. Rating aggregates are precomputed in a summary table. A persistent object cache can further reduce repeated public queries when available.

When enabled, Universal Reviews can output AggregateRating JSON-LD for supported targets whose review list or summary is actually displayed and which have approved reviews. Structured data eligibility does not guarantee a search-engine rich result.

No. The plugin outputs supported structured data according to its configuration and visible review content, but search engines independently decide whether structured data qualifies for or appears as a rich result.

Yes. Titles, names, answers and avatar initials are cut on character boundaries, so non-Latin text and emoji are no longer corrupted.

Yes. Moderators with the appropriate capability can add owner replies. Replies are displayed beneath the review on the front end.

A pack is a complete, ready-to-use review setup for one kind of business. Instead of building a form and tuning settings yourself, you pick a pack, look at a preview, and press Apply. It creates a review type, a form with smart follow-up questions, moderation and alert defaults, and a saved display preset you use as preset="…".

No. The preview shows what will be created, changed or left alone before anything is saved. If a review type or form with the same name already exists, the pack creates its own copy with a numbered name and leaves yours alone. Site-wide settings are only touched if you tick "Also use the pack's display defaults for the whole site". Everything a pack creates can be undone; a review type that already has reviews is kept, so no review is ever orphaned.

Restaurants & cafés and WooCommerce stores are included in Free. Clinics & healthcare, Courses & training, Agencies & freelancers and Rental properties are part of Pro. Free shows the Pro packs as locked cards.

A smart field appears only when an earlier answer matches, for example a delivery question after someone chooses Delivery. Free allows one condition per field; Pro allows several, with "all" or "any" matching. Rating, name, email, headline, review text and consent are always shown. The check also runs on the server, so a field hidden by its rule is never stored, even if a request tries to send it.

Never. The alert only emails you, through the background queue, so you can reply quickly. The review is published or held exactly as the review type says. The email contains the rating, the review type and a link to your dashboard, but no review text and no reviewer details.

It is off by default. When you switch it on for a review type, Universal Reviews asks WooCommerce a yes-or-no question: has this customer bought this product? A reviewer who is logged in is checked by their own account, not by the email typed into the form. Nothing about the order is stored; the only result is the existing "verified" badge. Publishing verified buyers without approval is a separate, optional choice.

No. Google Reviews is optional. Nothing contacts Google unless you set it up.

Google's Business Profile API terms require each business to use its own approved project. Universal Reviews therefore never shares one project between sites: you create the OAuth client, and you authorize access to your own Business Profile.

Business Profile API access must be requested from Google and approved (the quota for the APIs shows 0 until it is). Then enable the "My Business Account Management API", "My Business Business Information API" and "Google My Business API" in your project. The plugin shows the exact problem and a recommended action, with technical details you can send to support.

Google no longer accepts the saved authorization, usually because access was revoked, the password changed, or the account lost access to the location. Click Reconnect Google.

The Free plan displays up to 50 recent reviews. Your connection keeps working and the rest are not deleted from Google.

Classic (a clean list that follows your theme) is free. Aurora, Candy, Soft and Editorial, the grid and carousel layouts, and autoplay need Pro. On a Free site a Pro style or layout falls back to the Classic list, so a page never breaks.

No. They are a temporary copy kept for at most 30 days and refreshed daily. Disconnecting deletes them immediately.

Your server must be able to make outgoing HTTPS requests to Google (*.googleapis.com and accounts.google.com). Ask your host to allow them, then press Try Again. If you connected the wrong account in the meantime, use Change Google account.

Universal Reviews integrates with the WordPress privacy exporter and eraser. Personal information such as reviewer name, email and stored IP data can be anonymised while the review text remains as a business record.

The admin dashboard (assets/admin/index.js and assets/admin/index.css) is compiled from the human-readable TypeScript/React source in the admin-src/ folder, which ships inside the plugin. To rebuild it, run npm install and then npm run build in the plugin folder (esbuild bundles the JavaScript and the Tailwind CLI builds the CSS; see admin-src/README.md). The bundle includes React, React DOM, Radix UI, lucide-react, class-variance-authority, clsx and tailwind-merge, all under MIT-compatible licences. The front-end scripts (assets/admin/frontend.js and assets/admin/google-reviews.js), the front-end stylesheets, the block editor scripts (blocks/*/edit.js) and the PHP are not minified.