3task Review Box: Star Ratings, Pros & Cons and Review Schema

3task Review Box turns your test into a verdict readers can trust: criteria with weights, a score per criterion with the measured value next to it, strengths and weaknesses, a verdict and who it is for. The total score is calculated from the weights, so every number on the page can be checked.

Write the review where you write the post. A star in the editor toolbar opens the rating. One score is enough. Add criteria when you want more, and the total calculates itself. Click “Insert here” to place a compact rating at the cursor, and tick where else it should appear: a short verdict at the top, the full box at the end, a small tile in the sidebar. The star glows while a change to the rating is not saved yet.

Everything runs on your own WordPress. No external service, no account, no tracking, no fonts or scripts from other servers.

Your scale, your steps

• 0 to 10 points, 10 stars, 5 stars or 0 to 100 percent
• Steps of 0.1, 0.5 or 1, so 9.8 and 6.7 are possible
• Stars are filled to the exact share: 4.1 stars look like 4.1, not like 4 or 4.5. Half-star rounding is one switch away.
• The number is always shown next to the stars, for screen readers and for anyone who wants the exact value

Three looks, two styles

• Bars: criteria with weight, bar, score and measured value
• Stars: the same data as stars
• Profile: score ring and radar chart, drawn on the server as SVG with a text alternative
• Theme colours by default, your own main colour, or the dark Night style with three colour choices
• Text colour on the score tile is chosen by contrast, so it stays readable with any main colour
• Rounded corners, heading level and star colour in the Design tab, with a live preview

Weigh it my way

Readers can move sliders to say what matters to them and see their own score next to yours. It runs in the browser only. Nothing is saved or sent.

Short verdict at the top

One switch places a short verdict with the score below the headline and a link to the full box. Readers get the answer in three seconds, and the first lines of the page carry the verdict as real text.

Templates

Start a review from a template for products, movies, TV series, games, software, books, recipes, courses, events, music or local businesses: type, scale and weighted criteria are filled in. Save your own criteria as a template with one click.

Rankings

Build rankings from your reviews, as a block or a shortcode:

• Best or weakest first, by total score or by one criterion (for example all games by “Gameplay”)
• Filter by category, tag or post type
• As a list, a table or cards with image and short verdict, with stars next to the score if you like
• Page numbers for long rankings, the rank continues on the next page
• Equal scores share a rank, and scores on different scales are compared fairly as a share of their maximum
• An authors ranking shows who wrote the most reviews and their average score
• Only published posts appear, never drafts, private or password protected posts

Review schema that follows Google’s rules

• Review markup only for item types Google supports (product, movie, series, game, software, book, recipe, course, event, music and others)
• Rating with your scale, bestRating and worstRating always set, decimal point in the markup
• Pros and cons markup only for editorial product reviews with at least two statements, as Google requires
• No aggregate rating made from your own score
• No stars for your own business
• Markup only for published posts, never for drafts, private or password protected posts
• Works together with Rank Math and Yoast SEO: the review is added to their schema graph instead of a second block. Without them, the plugin writes its own JSON-LD once per page
• Schema diagnosis: the editor and the overview warn when another rating plugin may add review markup too, and a page check counts the review markup in a published page

Valid markup does not guarantee stars in search results. Google decides that.

Test check while you write

A small traffic light checks your review against Google’s guide for high-quality reviews: a named item, how you tested, criteria with reasons, at least two strengths or weaknesses, alternatives, own photos, disclosure of affiliate links, your own business. Red never blocks saving. It explains.

Disclosure made easy

Tick “review unit on loan”, “gift”, “paid partnership” or “affiliate links” and a clear sentence appears below the box. Buy links marked as affiliate get rel="sponsored" automatically.

Moving from WP Review

WP Review was closed on WordPress.org in May 2025. Review Box finds its reviews, even when WP Review is already deactivated, shows a dry run with old and new values for every post (also as a CSV list), moves them in batches of 50 and can undo the move. Scores keep their scale, a hand-set total score is kept with a note, and the old [wp-review] and [wp-review-total] shortcodes show the new box once WP Review is deactivated. WP Review’s own data is never changed or deleted. Posts you edit after the move are kept when you undo.

Moving from kk Star Ratings, WP-PostRatings, YASR, Absolute Reviews and WP Product Review is planned with reader ratings in version 1.1.

Blocks and shortcodes

• Blocks: review box (full or compact), short verdict, score badge for query loops and archives, ranking, authors ranking
• [3task_review_box], [3task_review_score], [3task_review_summary]
• [3task_review_toplist count="10" category="12" tag="" order="desc" criterion="" display="table" stars="1" paged="1"]
• [3task_review_reviewers count="5"]
• A “Score” column in the post list

Admin area

One menu with six tabs: Overview with a security cockpit and schema status, all Boxes with their check status, Move from WP Review, Templates, Design and Settings. A repair button recalculates the scores used for lists and sorting. Two tests appear under Tools > Site Health.

For developers and multilingual sites

• threerb_get_score( $post_id ) returns the score, scale and display text for your theme
• Override the box template in your theme: 3task-review-box/box.php
• Filters threerb_schema and threerb_word_labels
• WP-CLI: wp threerb migrate (with --dry-run and --undo), wp threerb recount, wp threerb demo
• WPML and Polylang: review fields are translated with the post (wpml-config.xml), Polylang copies the review when a translation is created

Accessible

Keyboard use for tabs, sliders and the star button, visible focus, labels for every field, numbers as text next to every bar, star and chart. Colours on the score tile and in the short verdict are checked for contrast.

Made by one person

Review Box is built by Frank at 3task, in the evenings and without ads or tracking. If it saves you time, a short honest review on WordPress.org helps more than you might think. After two weeks and three published reviews the plugin asks once, on its own pages only, and you can switch that off with one click.

Security

Please report security issues to kontakt@3task.de with the subject “Security”. Supported: the latest 1.x version. We confirm reports within two working days.

Credits

Icons: Tabler Icons (MIT).