Priya Raman Published
Best pace group I have joined
Routes posted every Sunday, and the leads actually run at the pace they advertise.
BuddyPress · Free · Group reviews
Your group directory says nothing about which groups are worth joining.
BuddyPress lists every group with a name, an avatar and a member count, and stops there. This plugin lets a member of a group rate it on five stars across each criterion you define, and write a review to go with it. Each one is held as a draft until the group admin accepts it, and the accepted average then appears on the group header, on every directory row, and in Schema.org rating markup for search engines.
Needs BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform with Groups · Free · v3.9.0
How it works
Four gates between a member typing and the score changing.
Group ratings are only worth reading if the wrong people cannot write them and the group owner can throw one out. Here is the whole path a single review takes.
-
A member of the group opens the review form
Only members can review. Someone browsing the directory who has not joined gets nothing to fill in, and a group admin cannot review their own group. The form lives on the group as its own tab, and the [add_group_review_form] shortcode places it elsewhere inside a group context.
Blocked: not logged in, not a member, admin of this group
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They score every criterion, then write the review
Each criterion gets its own five-star row, so a review is a set of scores rather than one number. Quality, Relevance and Engagement ship enabled; you add, reorder, and switch off criteria from the Criteria tab. One review per member per group by default, or turn on Enable Multiple Reviews.
Ships with 3 criteria, no cap on how many you add
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It is stored as a draft, and nobody sees it yet
The review sits on the group's Manage tab waiting for a decision. The group admin accepts or denies it, and site admins can do the same. In wp-admin the whole queue takes Bulk Approve and Bulk Deny. If moderation is not worth the effort on your site, switch on auto-approval and reviews publish on submit.
Approval is on by default, auto-approve is opt-in
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On accept, the average recalculates and goes public
The group score is the mean of each review's own criterion mean, so a five-criterion review counts once, not five times. It renders on the group header, on every row of the group directory, in the leaderboard shortcode, and as Schema.org AggregateRating markup in the page head. The author gets a notification and, if you leave it on, an email.
Denied reviews never reach the public tab
Criteria
A score you can act on, not one number nobody can argue with.
A single star rating tells a group owner that people are unhappy and nothing about why. Every review here carries one score per criterion, and the group page shows the breakdown alongside the average, so a group that runs well but posts rarely reads differently from one that is simply badly run.
Three criteria ship enabled. You add your own from the Criteria tab, reorder them, and switch any of them off. Switching a criterion off archives it rather than deleting it, so the ratings already given against it survive.
Reviews still work with rating criteria turned off entirely, if you want written feedback and no scores.
Default
One set, every group
Site owner defines it. Reviews stay comparable from group to group.
- Quality Ships enabled
- Relevance Ships enabled
- Engagement Ships enabled
- Pace honesty Added by you
Optional, off by default
Each group tunes its own
Switch on Group-Level Criteria and every group admin gets a Review Criteria tab.
- Quality Inherited
- Engagement Inherited
- Route safety This group only
A group inherits your whole set, keeps a subset of it, or writes criteria of its own.
Where it shows
A score members never see changes nothing.
Once a review is accepted the number travels. These are the seven places it lands, without a line of template work.
- bp_directory_groups_item
Group directory
Every row in the groups directory carries that group's star rating, so the list stops being a wall of identical entries.
- bp_before_group_header_meta
Group header
The average sits beside the group name on the group itself, with a review button in the header actions on BuddyPress and on BuddyBoss Platform.
- [bgr_display_top_groups]
Leaderboard, anywhere
A shortcode that ranks groups by top rated, most reviewed, or member count. Groups with no published review are left out. Set the heading, how many to list, and whether avatars and stars show.
- Appearance > Widgets
Sidebars and footers
Two widgets ship. One lists a group's reviews with a latest, highest, or lowest filter. The other shows the rating of whichever group is being viewed.
- AggregateRating
Search results
Ratings publish as Schema.org AggregateRating JSON-LD in the page head, with per-review markup alongside it, so search engines can read the score.
- /groups/<id>/reviews
Your app or your front end
Reviews list, create, read, update and delete over REST, and review data is added to the BuddyPress groups response. Group criteria have their own read and update routes.
- CSV export
A spreadsheet
Export every review and its ratings to CSV from the reviews screen in wp-admin, for the times the answer is not on a page.
Reviews can also post to the group activity stream with the stars included, and members get a BuddyPress notification when a review of theirs is accepted or denied. Both are settings, and both can be switched off.
Pricing
Free, and not a trimmed version of something else.
There is no Pro edition of this plugin, so nothing on this page is held back for one. Approval, group-level criteria, the leaderboard, the REST API and the rating markup are all in the free download.
Free
No licence key. No site limit.
Download freeNeeds BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform with the Groups component active.
- Five-star reviews on any BuddyPress or BuddyBoss group
- One score per criterion, with three shipped and no cap on your own
- Group-level criteria, so a group can tune its own set
- Approval on the group Manage tab, plus bulk approve and deny in wp-admin
- Auto-approval when you would rather not moderate
- Ratings on the group directory and the group header
- [bgr_display_top_groups] leaderboard, ranked three ways
- Two widgets: group reviews, and the displayed group's rating
- Schema.org AggregateRating markup for search engines
- REST API for reviews and for criteria
- CSV export of every review and its ratings
- Activity posts, notifications and emails, each switchable
- German, Spanish, French, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese, plus RTL
- Use on as many sites as you like, with no licence key
Before you install
Questions community operators ask.
- 01
What does BuddyPress Group Reviews do?
It adds reviews and star ratings to BuddyPress groups. A member writes a review and scores the group on each criterion you have set up, out of five stars. The review is held for approval, and once accepted it counts toward the group average shown on the group and across the group directory.
- 02
Who is allowed to review a group?
A logged-in member of that group. Someone who has not joined cannot review it, and the group's own admins cannot review their own group. By default each member gets one review per group, and you can allow more with the Enable Multiple Reviews setting.
- 03
Who approves a review, the site owner or the group owner?
Either. A new review is stored as a draft and appears on the group's Manage tab, where the group admin accepts or denies it. Site admins can do the same, and wp-admin has Bulk Approve and Bulk Deny for clearing a queue. If you would rather skip the queue, auto-approval publishes reviews on submit.
- 04
Is it one star rating, or several?
Several. Each review carries a five-star score for every criterion, and the group page shows the breakdown next to the average. Quality, Relevance and Engagement ship enabled, and you add or switch off criteria from the Criteria tab. Deactivating one archives it, so ratings already given against it are kept.
- 05
Can different groups use different criteria?
Yes, once you allow it. Switching on Group-Level Criteria gives each group admin a Review Criteria tab, where the group inherits your set, keeps only part of it, or adds criteria of its own. It ships off, so out of the box every group is scored the same way.
- 06
Does the rating show anywhere outside the group?
Yes. Each row of the group directory shows that group's rating, and the [bgr_display_top_groups] shortcode renders a leaderboard ranked by top rated, most reviewed, or member count. Two widgets are available as well, one for a group's reviews and one for the rating of the group being viewed.
- 07
Will search engines see the ratings?
The plugin prints Schema.org AggregateRating JSON-LD in the page head, with per-review markup alongside it. Whether a search engine chooses to display stars is its decision, not the plugin's.
- 08
Can I keep some groups out of the review system?
Yes. Exclude any group from the settings and its review form and review tabs disappear, and a submission aimed at it is rejected.
- 09
Can members reply to a review?
No. There is no reply or comment thread on a review. The controls a group admin has are accept, deny and remove.
- 10
What does it need to run?
BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform, with the Groups component active. The plugin needs WordPress 6.5 and PHP 8.0 or newer, and it works on multisite.
- 11
Is support available if I run into an issue?
Yes, documentation and support are available through the Wbcom Designs support channels.
Get started
Let your best groups prove it themselves.
Install the plugin, set the criteria you want groups scored on, and decide whether reviews wait for approval or publish straight away. Members can review from that point, and the first accepted review starts changing what your group directory tells people.