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 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.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
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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Hi
We’re using testimonials mangaer which is great BTW.
Question though. We’re just redesigning our site and have copied the database to a dev server while we do the update work but none of the testimonial files have copied over.
Where is the testimonial file stored?
Thanks
We’ll get a fixed version up today, I believe the Bare Bones widget is sample code we forgot to remove, it will be gone in the next update.
Thanks for all your good work!
We’ve released an update (2.0.1) which fixes all the bugs previously mentioned, especially the Bare Bones widget and also automatic upgrades via WP Dashboard. Please try again.
And another update 2.0.2 for another minor bug. Enjoy.
New version working for me!
Thanks for a great plugin and for being quick to address problems.
Cheers!
Toby Martini
Sadly 2.0.2 doesn’t work for me either.
It’s producing the same problems I mentioned in my earlier comment about the first version 2 of Testimonials Manager. When I update and reactivate Testimonials Manager, the drag and drop functionality in the widgets admin page and the left hand admin menu is gone. And the small down arrows to open the menu lists or to edit individual widgets do not work either.
I’m not sure if this is due to a clash with another plugin – I’ve not tested that yet. I thought I’d send this post to see if anyone else is having the same issue.
With the old version everything in the admin area is functioning as it should. So I’ve reinstalled that and am again ignoring the update notification on the plugins page for the time being.
Sorry to be a pain!
Thanks for all your great work with this plugin .. I hope I can get the new version to work for me.
Cheers
Sue
I’m not sure if that issue is caused by Testimonials Manager. I have a couple of blogs without the plugin, where I have the same problems as you mentioned.
I can’t be sure either.
But on the five wordpress sites (our website, our three blogs, and another site I manage for a nonprofit organisation) this is the first time I’ve seen this problem. And it has only happened when any of the Testimonials Manager 2.x have been installed on our site. I’ve tried updating to 2.0.0 then 2.0.1 then 2.0.2. Each time the problem (no drag and drop and no access to drop down menus in the admin area) has reappeared. Uninstalling the 2.x version and reinstalling an earlier 1.x version of Testimonials Manager has fixed the issue so everything works normally again.
The 2.0.2 plugin: “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”
Reading through the error log I saw this after a failed activation:
[28-Jan-2010 17:19:45] PHP Warning: call_user_func_array() [function.call-user-func-array]: First argument is expected to be a valid callback, ‘filter_testimonial’ was given in /public_html/blog/wp-includes/plugin.php on line 166
For everyone using the older version of the plugin, can you do this:
1) Deactivate the plugin and remove it completely via FTP
2) Upload the new version 2.0.2 and activate it
Im afraid it may not be enough to overwrite previous files with new ones, as we’ve moved things around quite a bit with this version. So I recommend deleting the old files completely first and install a fresh copy.
Nice plugin.
It would be useful if you can add an option to move the testimonials up/down to change their order of display.
Thanks
Just updated to 2.0.2 and the current version is causing an issue with TinyMCE Advanced 3.2.7 (current build). Deactivating either plug-in clears the error.
Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
Timestamp: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:18:02 UTC
Message: Object required
Line: 22
Char: 3
Code: 0
URI: http://www.address.com/wp-content/plugins/tinymce-advanced/js/tadv_replace.js?ver=20080425
Hi Gobala
I tried the steps you suggested – deactivated, deleted all files from our server then did a clean install of the new version.
However I’m still having the same problem in the widget admin area with 2.0.2 … No drag and drop for the widgets or boxes and no drop down arrows working for either the sidebar boxes or the widgets themselves.
It appears to affect the widget screen only. Other admin areas (as far as I checked) worked as they should. For some strange reason, this new version of Testimonials Manager is impacting on the drag and drop features for widgets. The pre 2.x versions don’t have that effect.
I’m using the Thesis 1.6 theme, by the way, on Wordpress 2.9.1
Deleted, verified removed, installed new, same fatal error message.
Again if I might ask for a previous version, we’ve had this breakage now for a few days and I’d like to at least have the old plugin running unless the db has changed so significantly that our trial upgrades has broken the path.
@Andy: You can still obtain an older version from the wordpress plugin directory.
I’ve tried installing the plugin on a number of blogs but I can’t reproduce the error both Sue and Andy are getting.
Thanks for your support militarysmurf – visuals that come to mind with that name make me smile
Andy appears to be getting a different problem than I am. In his case he’s getting a fatal error when trying to activate the plugin.
In my case the 2.x versions have installed and activated (either via the Wordpress Admin auto update feature, or via a clean install) without a problem.
It is the subsequent impact on the drag and drop features in WP (most particularly in the Widget area) that is a problem for me. The new versions of TM disable drag and drop and those drop arrows to the right of the title bars for widgets or any other menus and boxes on the screen.
Previous versions (1.x) all work with no problem.
Not sure if this clarification will help at all, but thought I’d add it just in case.
Cheers
Sue
I installed your testimonial plug-in and it is working great. However, I would like to turn on the randomization. Do you have that capability?
Thanks,
C
can u tell me how to use to display testimonial randomly in sidebar
Sorry, I would like to turn “OFF” the randomization.
Accidentally upgraded the plugin on another site and got this error:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class pagination in /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/testimonials-manager/testimonial_manager.php on line 963
Hi, I’ve got 2.0.2 running on a WP 2.9.1 installation and all seems fine.
My question is – could you provide a list of the CSS selectors, so we know how to style it without having to comb through the code to find them? That would be super helpful.
Thanks for the great plugin!
Further to the issue I mentioned re TM 2.x disabling drag and drop of boxes/widgets and down arrows on those in the Widget admin area, I did some extensive testing. Here’s what I found.
I disabled/reenabled all other plugins, singly, all together and in batches to see if any of those were causing a clash with TM to produce the error. No joy. It appears to be TM 2.x only that is the problem.
I also ensured I had deleted the TM widget from the sidebar, just in case leaving that in place was causing the issue, in spite of deactivating and deleting TM from the server. Again this made no difference either way.
I also ensured I’d not only deactivated and deleted TM but that it was removed completely from the server.
I discovered that the data remained in the database, so even tested by removing that via PHPadmin.
In every case, the Widget admin area suffered the same effect.
I’m afraid that’s about the limit of my testing knowledge, unless you can suggest something else I should try?
I’d love to know if anyone else is using TM 2.x successfully with the Thesis theme on a Wordpress blog – or anyone could tell me how I may test if it’s the theme itself with which the latest version of TM is clashing.
Cheers
Sue
I’m just installed WP 2.9.1, Thesis 1.6 and Testimonials Mgr 2 and all is working fine.
If you want to have a look at it it’s at:
http://budgethnadles.com.au/blog
Please note that the site is under construction and my current site is at http://budgethandles.com.au
Wolf
Thanks for letting me know, Wolf. It’s really weird as nobody else seems to have the Widget drag and drop problem.
At least there’s a workaround (see my later comment) though it’s far from ideal, having to manually edit widgets and nominate the sidebar and position, rather than simply dragging them.
It’s possible there’s a clash with another plugin … but I’ve not been able to work out which one. I do know that with TM 2 de-activated, the drag and drop function for the widgets admin area works works fine – but with TM2 activated, it doesn’t work.
I may have to dig deeper, leave TM2 activated and de-activate each other plugin separately and in turn to see if it’s a compatibility issue with one of them. I’ll try to make time to do that as soon as I can and report the result here.
I haven’t solved the same problem that I also have with 2 of my blogs..
Please view my post as I have pointed out the root of this issue.
Loving the plugin but i had a quick question. I’m trying to rifle through all the code to see how the items are stacked in the widget. right now there is no space between each testimonial and it read strange… would like to set it up so there’s a space between each post… is that possible?
Cheers!
I thought we were able to remove the whole “powered by” thing before. Can we no longer do this with version 2?
Thanks for this amazing plugin.
I’m currently working with on a theme which isn’t Widget-aware.
Is there code that I can paste into the sidebar.php file to enable it?
Thanks in advance!
Hi, just upgraded to 2.02 and got the fatal error thing everyone else is talking aobut. Before I go and uninstall and reinstall and follow the advice I see in previous posts I have a question: where are my old testemonials located so I can go get them? I would hate to think that they vanished.
Hi,
I am having trouble with the plugin. I have a page with the [show_testimonials] tag on it and it shows them but have the following error about them
It is necessary to specify the limit of items to show per page ($class->limit(10))
It is necessary to specify the limit of items to show per page ($class->limit(10))
Tried short codes but no good what am l doing wrong help please
In the settings page, can you check if you have specified the number of testimonials to show per page? Don’t leave that blank
This looks like a great plug-in. The only thing I am wondering is if there is an interface for a web visitor or member of your site to leave their own testimonial without having to be logged in to the backend of the wordpress site.
Hi there
I have had a look at all testimonial plugins available from the WP plugin page and have decided that yours seems to be the best. The only reason I kept on checking the others is that one option that is really important to me is that visitors can add their own testimonial, these should then appear as pending in the testimonials manager admin panel.
My work around at the moment is that I’ve added a MM form (a great plugin if you require more then one contact form on your site) for people to submit their own testimonial. Currently my testimonial are managed as part of my ZenCart shopping cart, which allows people to submit their own and I usually get 1 – 2 testimonials a week.
So this would be an important feature for me.
Regards
Wolf
We will add a submission form soon, as part of an overall application that works with wordpress.
Great plugin but is it possible to just display a ‘teaser’ (i.e., part of the testimonial) displayed in the widget and the full testimonial appear when they click to read more? Thanks.
I agree the teaser ideas would be a big enhancement. Because testimonials are of various lengths, when you display multiple testimonials in the sidebar widget, a long testimonial can mess up the page layout. It would be really helpful to be able to limit the testimonials to a certain number of words or characters and then provide a link to view the complete testimonial. Another option would be to highlight a particular portion of the testimonial. Kind of a pull quote from the full testimonial if you wanted to spotlight a particular sentence or two.
Thanks for your continued development of this great plugin.
Hello Gobala,
How to change which page we want to display the full testimonials?
Thanks for the great plugin btw!
This plugin is working great for me now. Thanks!
I have a feature request:
Please make it so that the testimonial person’s website opens in a new browser window
OR
Give us the option to make it appear in current or new window.
Thanks!
Toby
Re my issue with TM 2.x ‘breaking’ the drag and drop for widgets (though it works fine for other admin areas) I’ve discovered a workaround.
In the Widgets Admin area, I went to ’screen options’ and enabled accessibility mode for widgets. This disables the drag and drop functionality, putting an ‘add’ or ‘edit’ link on each widget, allowing me to work with them as usual. (Inactive widgets only show an ‘edit’ link, but after clicking that, on the following screen is an option to place the widget into the preferred sidebar, so that’s fine too)
Not perfect … but a workaround I can live with, given the fact that in my opinion TM is the best testimonial plugin I’ve found.
I am assuming, given other responses here, that the clash is with the Thesis theme rather than Wordpress itself. I do hope later updates to TM will fix this incompatibility issue, but in the meantime I can at least upgrade it and still have a functional widget admin area.
Cheers
Sue
Install the updated code that Chris Jean wrote and it will probably fix your problem. Fixed mine.
Thanks Justin … Chris’s code fixed my problem too. I’m rapt!
I keep getting No verification code generated when I submit a testimonial, any ideas? Thanks
Hi there,
Great plugin but is there any way I can remove the “Powered by…” advertisement?
Hi Scott, for now you’ll have to remove that via the WordPress code editor
Can you please add some functionality in the following manner. I like that I can personally go in and add testimonials, but I’d like a place for my customers to actually leave the review, and the admin approving or denying it.
Not sure if this is a Widget / plugin problem or theme problem. Currently I have the Testimonials plugin and widget enabled published to “Wide Sidebar Top” Unfortunately the separation between “posts” are not displaying the box around each entry. This causes no break between entries. Check out link below to see an example. You’ll notice the name and location of person is right above the next quote.
Beta Site: http://freestyle3d.helishit.com/
Currently using the supplied custom CSS code.
Any suggestions?
I’m having the same problem, although i have to say your testimonials page looks outstanding! Mine looks like A** compared.
Is there some custom code that came w/it i’m missing or perhaps something u could share?
Greatly appreciated!
Cheers
BRyan
There is a custom CSS box you can tweak to get your desired look. Both for the full page and also the sidebar widget.
First up thanks for a great plugin – its awesome. I’ve a couple of requests for your eventual consideration.
- Teasers would be nice, allow me to limit testimonials to 100-200 chars in the sidebar.
- Featured testimonial – some testimonials shine – it would be nice to feature them in the sidebar and testimonial page.
Thanks for a great plugin.
Great plugin. I noticed that the Testimonial Admin menu on left only shows if you are logged in as Administrator. Is there a way of having it display for role of ‘Editor’? I’d rather not change the core WP code if possible.
Cheers,
Shaun.
I could do with being able to do this too.
Any advice.
Thanks
Phill
I’ve figured this one out.
It’s not necessary to change the core WP code just the Testimonials code.
Find the Testimonial plugin files in your setup, they should be in a folder called testimonials-manager under plugins (note that this is in wp-content not wp-admin as you might suspect)
The file you want to edit is testimonial-manager.php
Around line 75 you will see the start of the code that sets who see’s what.
You will see the three Testimonail Manager menu items (Manage, Add New and Settings) all set to administrator.
Just change administrator to editor for the items that you want to make available to your Editors. I left Settings at administrator for my set up.
Hope this helps
Phill
Hey guys, I love this plugin! We’re using it on our new site and so far its working great. I just have a quick question.
Is there any built in method to pull 1 specific testimonial by id? We have a portfolio area where we’d like to pull a specific testimonial from the client we’re featuring on the page. We could hardcode it but it would be great to be able to use this plugin using something like getTestimonial(3).
What do you think?
Hi Jared,
If we that the plugin will just become too bulky. The best way to display individual testimonials is to copy and paste
Solution for the fatal error:
I finally found the fatal error problem. The problem comes from the ext WassUp. Desactivate WassUp, activate Testimonials-manager and reactivate WassUp, it should work.
Why? I have no idea…
Steve
is there a way so i user can fill their testimony and we only approve or edit it?
if anyone can help me..
There are some issues with the plugin enqueueing scripts and styles on every page load when the plugin is activated. There are other problems such as some scripts being enqueued unnecessarily (such as common and jquery-color, which are automatically handled by wp-admin/admin.php), calling wp_print_scripts rather than wp_enqueue_script (which can cause the script to be added multiple times), and directly running the admin_print_styles action and calling the wp_admin_css function (both of which are handled by wp-admin/admin-header.php).
I cleaned this all up to only load the scripts needed and to load them properly. I have both a diff file of my changes and an updated zip file available on my site.
Awesome… Just installed your updated code and it fixed the problem I was having with incompatibility with the TinyMCE Advanced plug-in.
Fantastic!
Thanks so much Chris. This fixed the problem I was having with drag and drop in the widgets admin area. All working fine now. Hopefully it will be a standard fix in the next update of Testimonials Manager too. 
Hi Chris, thanks a lot for your help. We’ll use your edited version as the next version update for testimonials manager, and give you credit for it as well.
Is there a template tag that I can use in sidebar.php to display the testimonials ?
Thanks for the plugin. Work perfectly!
Hi.
I want to put a single random testimonial on my frontpage. How can I do it?
Hi,
I have installed testimonial manager. I can’t see any settings or admin menu option to add/update my testimonials. I have seen the testimonials page added and the widget. I am yet to find the menu for entering my testimonials.
Thanks for your help
Am
The menu should be there if it is properly installed. Make sure you upload the entire folder, not just the files inside of it. And make sure there are no nested folders.
Problem! The old version displayed nicely as a page…however now, the name/url of one testimonial displays directly above the testimonial underneath it. There is no separation or spacing between testimonials. Help?
I think this is a CSS style issue, the theme you are using may have a different style. You’ll need to look at the CSS box and edit your own custom style if the default one isn’t working for you.
The previous version displayed fine with this theme (Atahualpa). I’m not sure what I am looking for in the CSS…padding or margins? And do you mean to look in the CSS for the plugin, or for the theme? Thanks
Great plugin! The only problem I’m having is that it doesn’t save any changes I’ve attempted to make to existing testimonials. The edit screen works fine, but when I press “update”, it reverts back to the original text. I have version 2.0.2. Any ideas?
Just upgraded to 2.0.3, and the issue is fixed. Nice work!
I can’t seem to get the custom CSS working right, I need white text on a black background in the widget area, but the widget doesn’t seem to use the custom CSS code. Any ideas? What code should I be using?
I have installed your plugin it works
The trouble is the text is light grey as does not show, how do i change the colour of text
cheers
Rowan Shead
Cashflow Copywriting & Marketing
Just been searching around and found your article. You have some great notes in there and I will be action planning some of your ideas.
Keep them coming!
Thanks,
Bangkok
Plugin works except for uploading own images. The files upload to the server okay, but the images aren’t shown in the testimonial page. Can you help…running latest version of plugin and wordpress 2.9.2…thanks =)
looking through page src data, the file is looks like “http://sniperdaytrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/advert-copy2-t.jpgadvert-copy2.jpg” …so probably something to do with formula to rename file after resizing? Don’t know php at all, but I’m messing with it to see if I can figure it out… =/
Can you try a filename with no *dot* in it – for example filename.jpg instead of file.name.jpg
And also perhaps check the permission settings for the wp-content/uploads folder – perhaps change it to “777″
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