Testimonials Manager is a WordPress plugin that allows you to manage and display testimonials for your blog, product or service. It can be used to build your portfolio or to encourage readers to subscribe / buy your products.
This is without doubt the best testimonial plugin for WordPress – it’s simple but powerful and flexible. Version 2 is redesigned and improved to allow more options when adding, managing and displaying testimonials.
Add and Edit Testimonials Easily
To add a new testimonials, just enter the Name, Website and Website URL as well as the full testimonial. Version 2 comes with a built in text editor, using TinyMCE. You can use Gravatars or upload a custom user image. All uploaded images will be automatically re-sized based on your settings.
Add New Testimonial
You can then view all your testimonials in a screen that is pretty similar to how you manage WordPress comments, and choose to Edit or Delete testimonials:
Manage Testimonials
Display Full Testimonials Page
All your testimonials can be displayed according to order on a full page. All you need to do is paste the following code in any WordPress page where you want your testimonials to appear:
Your full testimonials page will look like this:
Yvon Kruger
Fit in 90 Dagen
Testimonials Manager is an awesome plugin. Best of its kind that I have found.Scott Bernadot
Bernadot.com
I have several niche blogs. Sometimes I leave comments unapproved for weeks, because I don’t have time to decide about the borderline ones. (The obvious spam I delete immediately.)The Comment Policy plugin gives everyone clear warning and should make life much easier!
Kathleen Gresham
Web Fresh Leads
Thanks for the great plugin. It works perfectly! Love the fact that there's a widget AND being able to have a testimonials page. Ive tried at least two other plugins, and they dont match the functionality of Testimonials Manager.Mark
Testimonials Manager is cool! It saves me alot of time designing a testimonial page.Plus, it is so easy to manage.
Dr. L M Foong
SWOT Analysis Template
The Testimonials Manager plugin works a treat!! I've used mine in the sidebar on one of my blogs; extremely easy to set up and it really looks the part!Phil Henderson
Local Search Marketing
As of version 2, we added pagination and the ability to sort the order of testimonials that appear of the full page. Now you can have the latest testimonials displayed first, on page 1.
Edit Style and Settings
Testimonials Widget
Rotate Testimonials Using Sidebar Widgets
Most importantly, you can rotate a predefined number of testimonials in your sidebar using WordPress widgets. Just drag and drop the Testimonials Manager widget in the correct sidebar, then give it a title and set the amount of testimonials to rotate.
The widget will automatically detect pages with the shortcode and link to it automatically with a “Read More” link. If you’ve put the code in more than one page, you can choose which page to link to.
Of course, you can also edit the appearance of the widget using the Custom CSS box. Make your testimonials scream out loud if you want to, or subtly remind your readers why they are subscribed in the first place.
From Version 2 onwards, you can have as many widgets as you want on different sidebars, depending on the design of your blog. Plus, the widget now uses true randomization instead of “linear” randomization.
ShoutOuts
Special thanks to Chris Jean for helping us optimize the code for this plugin.
Change Log / Versions
29 January 2010
- Version 2.0.1
- Various bugfixes
28 January 2010
- Version 2.0
- Complete makeover of settings and appearance
- Added ability to paginate full testimonials page
- Added ability to sort testimonials
- Added multi-widget capability
- You can now specify image size
- Other fixes
22 December 2009
- Version 2.0.3
- optimize Code
- Fixed testimonial update bug
- Compatible with Wordpress 2.9.2
22 December 2009
- Version 1.2
- Fix Plugin Activation Hook
- Compatible with Wordpress 2.9
06 August 2009
- Version 1.1
- Fixed picture upload problem
- Fixed CSS styling to suit most of the themes
19 July 2009
- Version 1.0 – Testimonials Plugin released
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← Previous Comments
Weird hoodoo voodoo…
Alls working now! thanks for the great plugin
-Larry
If my theme is not widgetized, how to add the following php code (usually to the sidebar.php file) ?
*sorry for my english..i from indonesia*
Sorry, the shortcode is only for the post. The only way to display the testimonials on the sidebar is by making your theme widgetized. You can read http://codex.wordpress.org/Widgets_API to learn how to make your theme widgetized.
Works great… but It seems I can only add the widget to one sidebar… my site has 3 different sidebars so far. Once I add to say the “homepage sidebar” and I go back into the widget panel there is no longer an option to add it to the “internal pages” sidebar.
Hi, I just installed this great plugin. How can I reformat the layout? I’d love to make the image a bit larger in my design.
Thanks!
@ Frank – You can edit the custom CSS
I have a problem. I moved my wordpress installation to a new server. My Testimonials Manager stopped working. It was blank (no testimonials). So I tried adding some – it said “added successfully” but didn’t add anything.
I deactivated the plugin and deleted it and made sure the directory was actually GONE under wp-content/plugins. I reinstalled the plugin and activated it. I then tried creating the testimonials again with no luck. Same problem – it says “successfully added” or something similar but NOTHING!
Any ideas???
Help please!
Great plugin, thanks for sharing this. I’d like to suggest an added feature — this plugin would be even better if you could enter a short version of the quote to be used in the sidebar sort of like the “excerpt” feature of a Wordpress post. This way the widget could rotate several short testimonials and then on the full testimonials page the client’s full testimonial would be visible.
I love this idea!
I third the suggestion! Great plugin anyway!
Love the plug in, but I only want one to display at a time in the widget, and then rotate. Is this possible and if so, how? thanks!
@ Mark – Yes of course you can by selecting the number of items to rotate as 1..
oh, duh, thanks
Is there a way to display your testimonial widget in other areas other than the dynamic sidebar? For instance, say I am using it in the sidebar on all the pages, but I want to display it in a different area on the index page that doesn’t use the sidebar.
Any advice is appreciated,
-FS
Great plugin by the way.
@ Franklin – We’ll develop a code for that purpose in the next version.
Thanks Gobala,
I think I am going to try creating a second sidebar that only shows your widget. Hopefully it works.
Thanks for the great plugin!
How about making it possible for visitors to add testimonials as well?
Thanks!
I was going to ask the same
I also wonder about the Gravatar image. How should I know what Gravatar email-address someone uses?
“You can display a use image using Gravatars (enter Gravatar user email)”
Xarah
Gravatars will only work if you know the email address of the person, which you should be able to get if he / she emailed you the testimonial, or if you’re extracting a blog comment to be used as your testimonial..
Hi there
Thanks for the great plugin. It works perfectly! Love the fact that theres a widget AND being able to have a testimonials page. Ive tried at least two other plugins, and they dont match the functionality of Testimonials Manager.
One question though: Is there a way (or could it be considered) to sort the testimonials, and rearrange them according to importance ?
Thanks again!
Hi Mark, we’ll be improving the plugin based on feedback, look our for the next version.
Great plug-in and nice effort.
How can I custom reorder my testimonials? Right now, it is auto numbering and the first entered stays on top. I want to re-order the testimonials in the page based on importance of the testimonial every time.
Again, thank you for your time and support on this.
u mmm – what is the short code to make a page a testimonials page ? i can’t see it??
Hi Gobala, I just installed and configured the testimonials manager plugin for my new site redesign. Out of control! This plugin is super powerful and it works.
THANK YOU
I stumbled across this plugin at just the right time, and it’s does exactly the job I need, thank you!
A couple more suggestions / requests whilst you work on other suggested improvements.
1) As well as Gravatar, could you add an option for a Twitter username to be entered, and the image pulled via twivatar.org ?
2) Instead of div class=”testimonial”, could the div be changed to the more semantic blockquote element? And the Name be displayed as a Cite element?
3) Add default behaviour, that if a web address is added, but no company name, then the company name is shown as the web address?
4) With lots of testimonials, pagination could really do with being added to the Testimonial Manager Admin page. Perhaps also a search facility may be useful too.
I look forward to future versions of this plugin.
Hi Gary, we’ll definitely look at some of your suggestions, cheers!
Hi Gobala,
Any further action on my ideas? – Am just about to set it up on a client’s site, and didn’t want to have to make all the core code changes if a new version was coming out imminently with some or all of my suggestions!
Thanks,
Gary.
Hi Gary, I don’t think we’ll be coming out with a new version soon as there are other important projects to do. Will definitely be one up when WP 2.9 is out.
Hi,
Thanks so much for this plugin, but I’m having the same problem as Kaj mentioned:
after moving the site the plugin stopped working.
The sidebar widget works, but the full testimonial page doesn’t, it just displays:
[show_testimonials]
in text…
Would love to hear your solution,
Alex
Can you try putting the code using the HTML view in the editor, that may work..
Hi Gobala,
Tried that, thanks…but same result.
Do you want me to grant access to check for yourself?
Best,
Alex
Hey Gobala:
Great plugin! Finding a decent Testimonial plugin is hard for some reason. I actually found another one and had to modify the code to make it work. I emailed their team, they say they fixed it, but it’s never been updated to the repository!
Just checking – in the Widget, I don’t see a link to the person’s website. Am I missing something?
Hi Jeff, yes you can add a url as well as the company name. The company name will be hyperlinked to the URL like the testimonials you see on this site.
Lovely plug in!
It would be even better if it were possible to do simple formatting — bold, paragraph breaks, italic.
Is there a way of making the most recent testimonial appear at the top?
@ Jim – We’ll add that to our list of features to add..
i have problem to install this plug in.. can you help me
Hi Gobala,
My clients are homeowners and they typically don’t have websites. I would prefer them to enter their name (or first name + last initial), their city state and their comment. Can your plugin be modified to easily add/remove and name fields? If so, it would be exactly what I am looking for.
@ Dave – Any field you leave blank will not appear in the testimonial. So if your client does not have a website, leave the website field empty, or replace it with the City / State instead
Awesome, way better than some other plugins I’ve tried.
Would it be possible to have the widget show only the first 100 words (or specified number) of each testimonial? Some are long and take up the whole sidebar…
Thanks!
@ Michael – We’ll add that to the growing list of suggestions, lol..
Thanks for the great plugin. I have similar problem as Alex. There is nothing after the following lines if I do the view source. Is something crashing?
No.
Testimonials
Tools
What a great plugin.Thank you so much for this helpful plugin.
How do I add the ability for the user to add a testimonial themselve instead of me having to add them in for them?????
How can I make mine appear like yours in the sidebar? My font is aligning to the right for some weird reason.
Nevermind…thanks for the great plugin!
Great plugin! By far the best & easiest testimonials plugin I’ve found.
Suggestion for the next version… I am using a combination of pages & posts on my site, but cannot put the widget in both places. The theme I am using has several different widgetized areas, so being able to use it multiple times (3??) would be great.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
Paul
Hello
I just test plugin, everything works
but there is a problem, a big problem!
I get more to modify the pages!
I can create a page but NOT edit page
plz help me
i need the php code for put in the sidebar. can help me pls..
Hi this plug is great. But is it possible to have two testimonial pages with different quotes on each page?
Hi
How do I enable a person with ‘editor’ permissions to update the testimonials? It seems to only be available for admins?
Thanks for a great and simple plug in. Is there a way i can remove the Powered by the Testimonial Manager Plugin for Wordpress..?
Thanks
I’m loving your awsome plugin. Fantastic idea. Thank you.
Is their a way to shorten the ammount of text on widgets? My sidebars are really bottom bars below the main content. I have some long testimonials and it really draws out the length of my page. Can I use and excerpt and the viewer chooses to read more via a link that takes them to the testimonals page.
It would also give the viewer a chance to see more testimonials.
Thank you again.
any answer to this one yet? i love the plugin and it works great except a few very long testimonials on the widget makes the length of the page way too long…
thanks in advance
You could try editing the testimonials to make it shorter. In general testimonials aren’t supposed to be too long..
i need the php code for put it in the sidebar. very urgent
can any one help me pls..
Cool plugin – I like the fact that the testimonial text is part of the page html – good for SEO
Thanks!
Question – the plugin is working great but cannot upload an image. I get the following error: The uploaded file could not be moved to /home/mozakweb/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2009/12.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Hi,
I am getting below error for this plugin in front-end:
Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array in C:\HostingSpaces\skywardi\alookinsidephotography.com\wwwroot\wp-content\plugins\testimonials-manager\index.php on line 31
I am getting below error for this plugin in admin:
Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array in C:\HostingSpaces\skywardi\alookinsidephotography.com\wwwroot\wp-content\plugins\testimonials-manager\testimonial_manager.php on line 274
So could you please help?.
MAHESH
Thanks for the great plugin. It’s just what I was looking for.
I have some feature suggestions for you.
Can you add a field for the person’s title? For example,
Name: Joe Smith
Title: President
Website / business name with link
A more robust solution would be to allow admins to add their own custom fields and titles/labels. There was another person who requested adding city and state. If as the admin, I had the ability to add my own fields and labels, this would extend the functionality greatly.
The only other thing I think is missing is a form for users to submit testimonials. The submissions would be set to draft status until approved by the admin.
As a work around, I am going to create a testimonials form using the gravity forms plugin but it would be nice if the form fed right into the testimonials manager plugin back end.
Let me know if you have any questions and if you foresee any of these suggestions being added to a future version of the plugin.
Thanks
Jeff Klein
Webmaster
I would like to display the testimonials on the complete list page in reverse chronological order so the newest testimonial would be first.
Ideally you could build a drag and drop manual sort function into the plugin backend but for now, a sort order by date would be fine.
Thanks
It’s a great plugin. However, could it add the testimonial order function to the next version?
Hi Gobala,
Your plug in looks cool. It installed fine in WP but didn’t create a Testimonial page. So I manually created a page and pasted [show_testimonials] into the blank page. But i cant seem to create blank form so testimonials can be entered… the manager recognizes the page i created saying that there are no testimonials.
I notice in your doc that you refer to some code to paste but there is no code there… please help…
Thank u
Arthur
I think this is possibly the best testimonial plugin out there for WordPress. I installed and tested several others and this one rocks. That said, to be perfect, in my opinion it severely needs the following options:
1. Ability to SORT testimonials SOMEhow (Pleeeeeeeease!)
2. Ability to add widget to multiple toolbars.
3. Ability to control the sizes of the images for each testimonial.
4. Maybe some kind of auto-rotation of the sidebar testimonials, not just on page refresh, but every few seconds or so (not critical, but would be cool).
When can we expect some kind of sorting? NObody else seems to have that, this plugin could rule them all.
Can you sort the tesimonials so the most recently added appear at the top? i.e. from newest to oldest
Something’s fishy in ie. The first testimonial’s styles are broken for some reason. Any ideas? http://www.adavenkid.com/dev
Which IE version is that? Sometimes I wish IE just didn’t exist!
Hello! Thanks for the plugin!
Can someone please tell me what php code I need to use to have 1 random testimonial appear in my home page template?
A hearty vote for the ability to order and reorder testimonials! My client has over 300 of them, and obviously we want the newest ones to display first.
Another idea: it would be great to have the option to categorize testimonials. My client has several services he offers, and he’d like to be able to put testimonials about, for example, speaking under a ’speaking’ category, so people looking for particular services could view only the testimonials that pertained to what they are looking for (rather than having to wade through a ton of them)
Overall though, after looking at so many of these, this is the nicest testimonials plugin I’ve found!
We will release a new version of Testimonials Manager apporx by end of next week. I can’t promise all the features as requested, but we can definitely add and revamp the sort function, image or Gravatar size, etc.
That’s great! Looking forward to it. Thanks for your continued development of this great plugin.
We have just uploaded Testimonial Manager Version 2.0 with a lot of significant changes. Feel free to upgrade, try it out and leave feedback.
Hi Gobala, I’ve been using Testimonials Manager on our website for some time now and am delighted with it.
I’m using Wordpress 2.9.1 and this newest update to Testimonials Manager is not working for me. I’ve tried using the automatic upgrade in WP three times now – in between deactivating, deleting (and checking all files are gone from our server) before reinstalling the previous version again from a backup. Each time I’ve tried using the upgrade function in WP, here is what happens:
1) Plugin supposedly upgrades automatically and reactivates without a problem on the updating progress page that comes up
2) When I return to the plugin page, it’s still grayed out and says I need to activate it.
3) When TM is then activated, my Widgets page in the admin area ‘breaks’ .. I can’t edit any of the widgets or move them around.
As soon as I deactivate the new version of Testimonials Manager and reinstall the old version, everything is working as it should.
I’ve not yet tried doing a clean install of the new version as this would mean I’d presumably have to re-enter all the testimonials … a LONG job! However I am assuming the automatic update in WP SHOULD work, so thought I’d post this message to you.
I’m not sure about the Bare Bones Widget that comes packaged with it either .. this produces the same behaviour (supposedly updated, then when back on the plugins page, it says it’s not activated) I’m also not sure what its purpose is other than for widget developers – so I really don’t want to use that plugin as well.
Hope you can help me …. I love the plugin and would really like to use the functionality of the new version, but at the moment have reverted to the previous version.
Cheers
Sue
Just upgraded and can’t get it to work now.
“Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.” It doesn’t show what the error is in the box below though.
Also, it now addes something called the Bare Bones Widget. Is it supposed to??
Thanks for looking.
Cheers!
Toby Martini
Weird errors when i upgraded. It added a second plugin called “bare bones widget” which doesn’t seem to do anything? Also, is there a way to remove the attribution link? I leave it on one of my sites, but for another one I’d prefer to have it off to keep a cleaner look on a sales page..
We’ll check on that right away. You upgraded via the WordPress dashboard right? I mean using the “Automatic Upgrade” function?
I did Automatic once. Failed.
Uninstalled.
Grabbed the zip from your site and installed via upload. Failed.
Cheers!
Toby
Yes, i upgraded through wordpress dashboard. If I try to delete the additional plugin, it tries to delete the testimonials plugin as well.
I’m having this same problem … took a screen-shot if you want it.
Code at top of WP dashboard: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /wp-admin/includes/post.php on line 1475
Me too. After upgrading via Dashboard, a new plugin, “Bare Bones Widget,” appeared, which also had its own upgrade notification. I attempted to upgrade it, but failed. I subsequently reverted to the previous Testimonials plugin. Let us know when you work that out. Thanks!
The new version 2.0 is having some issues: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/357629?replies=1
Can you put up the prior version or send a link so I can downgrade until the issue is resolved?
I’m using WordPress 2.8.6
Ok, at first glance, this new testimonials manager has now risen to the top and killed all the other ones out there. That said, there are a few bugs. First I will list what I think are amazing improvements and then the bugs:
1. Ability to set the image size within the admin for custom photos. Brilliant.
2. Display order, ascending or descending. AWESOMENESS
3. WYSIWYG editor for testimonials. Very cool.
BUGS!
1. The ascending descending dropdown doesn’t save my choice when I hit ’save’! But it still works, when I select descending. But if I save again, it goes back to ascending.
2. Custom CSS – if you delete all the custom css and hit save, it just comes right back again.
3. That’s about all I’ve noticed since this morning.
We’ll iron out the bugs today. Cheers.
Yeah. The plugin is a no-go.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/357629?replies=2
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