BrightLocal Reviews

Display customer feedback collected by the BrightLocal Showcase Review widget anywhere on your WordPress site.

Table of contents

1. Features
2. Requirements
3. Installation
4. Configuration – connecting your BrightLocal widget(s)
5. Displaying reviews in the Block Editor
6. Updating the reviews that are stored locally
7. Development / contributing
8. License

1. Features

• Imports reviews for one or more BrightLocal Showcase Review widgets and stores them as a custom post type (bl-reviews).
• Provides a BrightLocal Reviews block for the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg).
• Grid, list, or slider presentation with star rating, author, date and source-favicon.
• Filter the output by a Label that you define for every widget.
• Optional "Load more" / infinite-scroll that fetches additional reviews over AJAX.
• Reviews can be edited like regular posts, assigned labels, and are available through the WP REST API.

2. Requirements

• WordPress 5.9 or later (Block Editor enabled).
• PHP 7.4 or later.

3. Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP from the GitHub releases page or clone the repository into wp-content/plugins/brightlocal-reviews.
2. In the WordPress admin go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and activate BrightLocal Reviews.
3. (Developers) run composer install to pull in the update-checker dependency and npm install && npm run build to compile the block assets.

4. Configuration – connecting your BrightLocal widget(s)

1. In the dashboard open BrightLocal Reviews → Settings.
2. Click Add Row and enter: • Widget ID – the 40-character hexadecimal ID that appears in the BrightLocal Showcase Review embed code.
   • Label – any human-readable name that helps you identify this widget (e.g. Google, Facebook, Downtown Location…). This label is also what you will select inside the block.
3. Press Save & Import. The plugin contacts BrightLocal's API, downloads all current reviews for every widget you listed and saves them as bl-reviews posts.
4. A WP-Cron task subsequently checks for new reviews every hour and keeps everything in sync.

Tip: You can manage Review Sources and Review Labels from the same menu if you need to tidy-up taxonomy terms later.

5. Displaying reviews in the Block Editor

Add the BrightLocal Reviews block to any page, post or template.

Block settings (right-hand sidebar):

The front-end markup is schema.org compliant (Review + AggregateRating) and inherits its typography & colours from your theme.

Rendering in PHP templates

If you are building a classic-theme template you can still use the block:

// Render the block with its default attributes.
echo do_blocks( '<!-- wp:brightlocal-reviews/reviews /-->' );

// …or override attributes in JSON:
echo do_blocks( '<!-- wp:brightlocal-reviews/reviews {"reviewLabel":"google","limitItems":true,"itemsPerPage":5} /-->' );

6. Updating the reviews that are stored locally

Reviews are refreshed automatically every hour (WP-Cron). You may also trigger a manual re-import from BrightLocal Reviews → Settings.

7. Development / contributing

1. composer install – installs the Yahnis Elsts Plugin Update Checker.
2. npm install – pulls down the JavaScript toolchain.
3. npm run start – watches files and rebuilds the block during development.
4. npm run build – produces a production build.

Pull requests are welcome! Please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

8. License

GPL-2.0-or-later – the same license that ships with WordPress itself.