Only tested with 2.1+
So what is the Rank Plug-in? It’s a plug-in for word press that’s responsible for that cool little box on the left hand side of the blog that we’ve titled “Top Commenters.”
Basically, it counts your comments– the number in the parenthesis– and based on that number assigns you a “title” that Christopher and I have chosen. At intervals of 50, you move to the next level. For example, if you’ve commented between 301 and 350 times, you’re a Zen Master and the ying-yang sign will appear next to your posts. Once you’ve commented 351 times, your title changes to “the Lil’ Devil” and you get a devil’s face.
Cool huh? Yeah, I know. My boy Christopher rocks.
It’s pretty awesome if you’re a commenter on our site because we came up with some pretty kick ass titles and pictures for you guys, but Christopher has also posted the plug-in so other people can add the feature to their sites (he’s generous like that 
). If you do add it to your site, you can set your own titles, pictures, and number of comments at each rank. So enjoy!.
The system is designed to be fairly flexible and simple and allows for a great deal of customization within the plugin itself. (All Pictures Expand to Larger Sizes)
Main Features
1. Simple Rank & Image creator
2. Override / Exclude Manager
3. You can pull the rank from within the single page for each commenter as shown here.
How to do this:
Please read the read me file it has detailed instructions in there.
4. You can also just display a list of your top commenter’s.
How to do this:
Please read the read me file it has detailed instructions in there.
Installation:
1. Download Rank Plugin
2. Upload the `rank` folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
3. Activate the plugin.
4. In your wordpress administrator choose options and rank management.
5. Please see #3 & #4 above for exact instructions on how to do each part.
Frequently Asked Questions
None Yet 
You can see this on display on the front page of Battle of the Sexes
Is there a way to get the rank displayed if you are using widgets?
After I replace code in comments page, I have error instead of my comments: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in …….
(WordPress 2.2)
Hmm, apparently I don’t merit a custom icon — ;(
Actually… the point of this plug in is to entice people to comment more so that they’ll move up through the ranks and see what new cool title awaits them. However… given your history of enthusiastic commenting for the intrinsic rewards associated with such, this is probably not the right plug in for you.
However… pay your dues, PJ, and you too may get a custom icon. Trouble’s been with us since almost the inception of cvc… longevity may be the key for you too.
BTW… can we get rid of the sad, teary-eyed face? It bums me out when the emoticons cry…
NO! Crying is a part of the emotional makeup of the internet — Algore told me so! He also said it helps reduce global warming… but I think he was just pulling that “fact” out of his ass.
On a serious note, why don’t you incorporate the option of using the users’ gravatar as the icon? Presumably, they are happy with the gravatar they’ve selected for themselves, no? I realize it does hinder the whole “rank stratus” concept, but it adds personal identity to the mix. How about this: at a certain level or participation, then they begin using their Gravatar?? A little more difficult to implement, but it adds the customization aspect to the plugin… what about it ‘topher?
Because Gravatars are so two years ago. Rank is cooler, faster, and better. Trust me. We use to run Gravatars on our site but with around 120 comments on some posts waiting on the Gravatar server, even with every speed hack I could find it was still slow.. infact at one point I allowed them to use their favatar, custom avatar and gravatar.. and now I’ve decided to just do away with it completely and have our own unique system.
Are the emoticons still crying Clarice?
LOL!
:p Nothing that a helping of fava beans and a bottle of chianti can’t cure…
Chris,
Doesn’t seem to be working with my WordPress 2.2. I get the following error when adding commenters to my widget using
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '‘ASC’ LIMIT 10' at line 1]
SELECT comment_author, COUNT(comment_id) AS total FROM wp_comments GROUP BY comment_author ORDER BY total ‘ASC’ LIMIT 10
Any ideas?
J. Pisano – http://www.mustech.net
I just added a read me file that has everything in plain text. I’m pretty sure some of the stuff you need to add wasn’t displaying right in this post. Additionally I have not tested it at all with widgets.
I haven’t been able to get it to show up in my sidebar yet, what is the code I need to put in?
It is in the read me file.
I should have stated, I tried it and it caused an error. I put in
%COMMENTER% (%COUNT%) %RANK%
but it didn’t work.
< ?php get_commenters(15, 'DESC', '', FALSE); ?>
get_commenters(15, ‘DESC’, ”, FALSE);
surround that with standard php flags
As far as I know I did just that and my sidebar is still screwed up. Thanks anyway.
You remembered to activate the plugin right… sometimes deactivating and reactivating can help.
I got it working, thanks for your help.
Is there a way to keep the link to the author’s blog in the comments?
Not at this time.
That’s cool, thanks.
I’m back, how can I alter the code in my sidebar to take out the image?
(I put in spaces in the code)
Remove %Image%
Strange. I have installed the plug-in, made sure the images are uploaded, excluded myself and pasted the code you gave Robin up there in proper php flags, but I get this error message:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '‘DESC’ LIMIT 15' at line 1]
SELECT comment_author, COUNT(comment_id) AS total FROM wp_comments GROUP BY comment_author ORDER BY total ‘DESC’ LIMIT 15
Any idea about what I’m doing wrong?
Try deactivating and reactivating.. especially if your using 2.2
Worked like a charm, now I feel like an amateur.
Thanks for the great plugin! It works fine in my wordpress 2.2.
To make links to the homepage of users commenting, you can follow this tip:
http://neppe.no/2007/05/rank-wordpress-innstikk/
…sorry for the Norwegian language. Hopefully some of you can spot the required stuff to insert into comments.php.
I run a blog network (WP 2.2) and I incorporated this plugin easily with the instructions. One tip is that I noticed pingbacks were showing on the list (even though they were caught with Akismet as spam) so I modified the code.
This is the modified line in the plugin:
$resArr = $wpdb->get_results(“SELECT comment_author, COUNT(comment_id) AS total FROM $wpdb->comments WHERE comment_type ‘pingback’ GROUP BY comment_author ORDER BY total “.$sort.” LIMIT “.$limit);
Works perfectly.
)
Sorry… the “not equal” didn’t show in the above code.
Between comment_type and ‘pingback’ there should be angle brackets (less then greater then) with no spaces in between.
Thank Zedd. Also if you would like you can email your fixes to Christopher@chrisvschris.com
Thanks
Sent you email.
I’ve tweaked it to only show approved comments on the top poster list.
Unapproved, spam, or pingbacks (even approved pingbacks) will not show on the list. This way only true posters get shown. Tested in WP 2.2 and it works great.
Hi Sex-Battlers,
ur rank runs good t my page but I have found out 2 problems:
1st:
registered users can completely manage the rank plugin like me, and i am the admin! that´s not good! how can I deaktivate the settings for normals users?
2nd.
sometimes the datas from the pugin are loaded to slow … so it happens that u login and no name, image and count appears. but if u click in a post, then the datas come out of the blue
So please help me – most important is the 1st issue!
greets from Germany
I didn’t notice users could change all this stuff. I didn’t like that either so I fixed it.
On the rank.php page look for two lines that look like this:
add_options_page(‘User Rank Management’, ‘User Rank Management’, 0, ‘rank/user_management.php’);
add_options_page(‘Rank Management’, ‘Rank Management’, 0, ‘rank/rank_management.php’);
Change both 0′s to 10 like this:
add_options_page(‘User Rank Management’, ‘User Rank Management’, 10, ‘rank/user_management.php’);
add_options_page(‘Rank Management’, ‘Rank Management’, 10, ‘rank/rank_management.php’);
Then users don’t get access.
The slow issue I have never experienced, so I couldn’t say.
Works great in 2.0! Thanks for this plugin.
Hi! I’ve been using this plugin for a while now and I love it.
But I noticed something today and I can’t fathom how to fix it. If one person is already leaving comments, as say Jane Doe, then if another person comes in and uses that name their comment count is combined with the other persons. I noticed this happening because I had a long time commenter who stopped visiting and when I saw her post count increase I thought she had returned. Lo and behold, the email and url reveals it is another person entirely just with the same name but now they have the previous commenter’s rank and number displayed by their comment. Is there a way to get the plugin to distinguish between different commenters with the same name?
WAY COOL!!! I remember asking about this about a year or so ago on wordpress.org and surprised no one seemed to be interested in the idea
I too agree with Joana, maybe use the email address in there somehow but only dispay their username
It works, but my images don’t show up, not even in the admin configuration under current image, Do i have to 777 and folders ?
Cannot decipher the hyroglifics with missing images you are calling detailed instrucitions in the readme file.
Couldn’t you just supply a snippet of code with commented out instructions?
I would like to add the sidebar widget, but cannot figure out what you mean by the readme with broken images.
Oh yea, to the guy above, you must 777 the image file, and they must be .gif, not .jpg
I don’t want to pretend to be Christopher here… (well, unless Christine’s naked, wet and moaning beneath my hard pounding flesh
), but I see the graphics just fine (no broken images links here) and the readme file seems to be in plain, easy-to-read text format (no graphics).
Furthermore, he actually gives you detailed instructions like “Find the line” and “replace with” in the readme file AND he provides several detailed examples in the comments above, so get a clue and re-read the post, sir.
Now, Christine, where were we…
I was wondering how this plugin goes about differentiating between the all the comment authors? Is it by first name only? Is it by both the name and email?
Also, I’ve seen the plugin in action on a friend’s site and I noticed that in the list, the people with websites don’t have a link to their website. I’ve gone through the readme file and see that there’s not a way for me to include that. I like using PFAdvice’s Show Top Commenters plugin since it allows me to show a list of the top commenters with a link included, if they have one. I’d love to start using this one too, but not being able to link the author kind of turns me off.
P.S. I’m not subscribed to the comments in this post, so if you could also send me an email, that would be great. Thanks.
P.P.S. Thanks for the awesome plugin.
)
Thanks for this plugin! I’ve been looking for something like this one for ages. I have a suggestion to make the plugin even more additive; a different rank for the top poster. In this web it could be “the most virgin” or something like that :d
You can easily make a custom level and just assign it to the top poster.
)
How can I assign a rank to the top poster? I can’t find the option
You assign specific ranks by creating a custom level!
Yep, totally.
“You assign specific ranks by creating a custom level!”
Wordpress -> control panel -> options -> rank management -> add new rank -> name, min, max, upload image.
You can define a minimum and a maximum number of posts for the new rank, but how do you define that this rank it’s for the top poster?
:S
I forgot to put my name in the above post. This is the one that mentioned :[
You set the minimum amount at 99999 so nobody will ever get that rank. Then you manually assign it to the top person. You can have lots of custom ones for people. I use this system on 3 blogs flawlessly.
Just be sure that you get the latest code. It should have the couple fixes Zedd (aka: me) posted above.
I think I’ve found a bug; in WordPress -> control panel -> options -> user rank management, along with my registered users, it appears a long list of all those unregistered users who spammed with trackbacks.
Besides, in WordPress -> control panel -> options -> rank management -> add new rank, there is no option to chose an already uploaded image, you have to upload always.
“You set the minimum amount at 99999 so nobody will ever get that rank. Then you manually assign it to the top person.”
-> Yep, I thought of this :d , but I meant an automatic rank assignation
“You set the minimum amount at 99999″
-> is it possible to leave it blank? I want to manually assign a couple special ranks to some users.
BTW, I’m having a lot of fun with this plugin, thank you very much!
)
Ok, two things…yes that trackbacks and pingbacks show on that admin page. It’s not a bug. You really should be deleting spammers comments eventually, so that doesn’t matter. If you have the newer version (I modified it for Chris some time back) then those will not show to the public anyway (they used to).
Second, to manually assign some special ranks…put the minimum as 99999. This number never shows in public either. It’s just the minimum number someone would need to get that rank. The custom rank will show no matter if your friend has 3 posts or 3000 posts. Nobody else really has a chance to get it.
So, is rank plugin alive?
)
Why my registred READERS can change rank of all users?
Bug?
Hi again John!
I downloaded the version that was availlable yesterday.
“that trackbacks and pingbacks show on that admin page. It’s not a bug. You really should be deleting spammers comments eventually, so that doesn’t matter.”
They were deleted and marked as spam. That’s why I was surprised when I saw in your plugin.
Hope in the future you consider implementing an automatic top poster rank.
First, for the record…it’s not my plugin. It was created by Christopher & Christine (of this site) and it worked perfectly fine out of the box. There really were no errors or issues with it at all. Only a couple things that didn’t work for me functionally. I simply added my own tweaks. I run this plugin on 4 blogs actually and have done 3 or 4 WP upgrades without a single issue.
I’ll email Chris the most recent updated copy again, but it doesn’t have anything that someone couldn’t change by reading posts above. Let me be clear…they are not “bug fixes” because this plugin works perfectly.
1) Unapproved comments, spam, or pingbacks (even approved pingbacks) will not show on the sidebar list to the public. Only true posters get shown.
2) Increased the security option so only admin can change/ranks.
HOW TO DO BOTH OF THESE TWEAKS YOURSELF ARE POSTED ABOVE.
I could host my files or email them myself, but I won’t so don’t ask. Christopher & Christine worked extremely hard on this plugin and I think they should have some thanks rather then complaints.
(y)
I’ll try and post the update soon!
Sorry!
I just want to thank John for the updates to the Rank plugin. I’ve posted his latest file, he’s been great in keeping this plugin up to date working well.
And just for the record, my involvement in developing plug-ins is usually limited to me saying, “Hey Christopher, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do… [this] on the site?” And then he goes away for a little while and comes back with a plug-in. I’m not sure what he’s doing when he goes away, but I have a feeling it’s more involved than my part.
At least when you say “wouldn’t it be cool…”, he doesn’t say “you’re CRAZY” — does he?
No, he doesn’t. But then again, he knows I’m the brains behind the site and he’s the braun. I’m the the dreamer, he’s the do-er. I’ve got the creativity, he’s got the ingenuity. You get the point. I’ll stop there.
- this is just a text to unsubscribe me from this topic -
“I’m not sure what he’s doing when he goes away”
90% inspiration, 9% perspiration and 1% masturbation?
100% masturbation… Christopher *never* does anything less than 100%!
PJ… I’d say those percentages might be a bit off.
Daniel… hate to tell you this, buddy, but texting a message to our comments is not going to unsubscribe you from whatever it is you subscribed to. You need to figure out first, how you subscribed, and then go through the process of unsubscribing. Otherwise, whatever it is you’re getting– emails, RSS feeds, blah, blah, blah are gonna keep coming.
…and did the Daniel need to submit text in order to mange his comments? I think not… silly, little virgin.
Damn — it’s all in the timing…
Just wanted to say “Hi Daniel.” :p
:d :d (n) (u) (o) (o) (o) (o) (@) (@) (g) (g) (g)
(t) 
(~) (&) (c) ;( ;( ;( ;( ;( (c) 
(w)
I can’t quite make out those hieroglyphics…
Oh, here… I’ll translate. Fudgewart is trying to say that at first, he was happy when he discovered the rank plugin. But then he tried to do it on his own site and it didn’t work and he felt heartbroken. But after spending some time working on it and having sex with twins on his birthday, he had an epiphany when his sexy friend called him and gave him the solution. After working like a dog and living on coffee for a few days, he still couldn’t make it work. But by his last cup of coffee, he figured out what he was doing wrong and finally installed the plugin. The success what bittersweet though because after it was installed, he had to come up with all the rank titles which meant even more work.
Come on, PJ… it’s not that hard.
That’s what his wife said… *rimshot!
You cut me deep, Trouble, you cut me real deep…
But isn’t that her job?
To get me hard, or to cut me?????
I’m not into cutting… :[
I wuz gonna say…
Very cute. To get you hard.
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Damned spammers!
I am getting this error when I try to upload the picture on the ‘Rank Management’ page:
[function.move-uploaded-file]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in…
Why does this happen?
not working
(u) (l)
(t) (8) (f) 
) ;( :s :[ :[ :$ :$ (&) (c) (@) (o) :p (u) 
I’m about to try this plug in out. Sounds like good stuff!