Bitcoin Forum

Hi,
I'd like to announce the opening of http://www.bitcoinsreview.com
The site is still, sort of, under construction (in terms of graphics) but it is fully operational.

What is Bitcoins Review?

Bitcoins Review is a website where customers of bitcoin merchant websites can review their experience with the company - similar to a site like tripadvisor.co.uk.
The aim is to allow users who are thinking of purchasing a product to check that businesses previous ratings from past customers.
Ultimately this will expose the bad or scam websites, which have been somewhat of an issue in previous months, and promote the good, genuine ones.
So, not only is this website great for consumers, it is also a great tool to maintain a flow of customer feedback and exposure of a shop or service for merchants to take advantage of.

A mock example of a review can be seen below:

http://www.bitcoinsreview.com/example.png

The site is currently in its infancy therefore the list of current merchant websites is very small. However users and merchants themselves can submit a website to the review system. Help entering these websites into the system would be greatly appreciated. Afterall this website will help the consumer community greatly. If you like bitcoinsreview.com then please please please spread the word and send it to your friends. The more people we can get involved in this project the more helpful and powerful the website will become in promoting higher quality merchants.

If you have any questions please view the FAQ on http://www.bitcoinsreview.com or reply to this topic.
We also have a twtter page for announcements: https://twitter.com/#!/BitcoinsReview (https://twitter.com/#!/BitcoinsReview)


*EDIT*

You can now review Bitcoin Mining Pools and Trading Sites such as Mt Gox!

Also if anyone is interested I'm looking for someone who can help entering the merchant sites with me so users won't have to. Just PM me or reply here if you are interested.

Thanks. I realised that there seems to be a real issue with trust when trading with bitcoins therefore there really needs to be a place where consumers can go to check whether a shop or service is legitimate before ordering. And obviously its great for genuine traders too as its essentially free advertising for them... it will reward their good services with more customers.

Oddly enough I registered bitcoinreviews.com a few days before you did this but you beat me on the release of your site. Here's to hoping there's no business-animosity between us as time goes on. For now I need solid development just as you do.

Pending my own live site, we should try to communicate on how to co-exist with basically the exact same concept and name. Maybe some specialization is in order?

I posted a review but forgot a link ><

Yeah, I'm a scrub, here it is (for alpaca socks) http://www.grasshillalpacas.com/alpacaproductsforbitcoinoffer.html

Perhaps another box for the URL?

Haha so you are the reason I couldn't get bitcoinreviews.com! :P Yeah I think it would be a good idea to work alongside each other, afterall the websites goals are essentially the same. Not sure what we could do apart from specialisation in a particular area though. Hit me up on a PM if you want to chat more.

Hey. Thanks for leaving the review :)
However I think you used the submission page slightly wrong. It's my fault because I didn't explain what it was properly . Basically that page is just to submit a website to the system. You then have to actually submit your review.


That is what you put, so if you could go to http://www.bitcoinsreview.com/2011/05/22/alpaca-socks/ and enter the review again, it would be greatly appreciated. I would have done it myself but I don't know what Star Ratings you would have given it.

Did so - apparently I also posted 3 times (was having trouble with the security code, it's really hard to read sometimes)

Yeah its not a great captcha tbh... might change it. You can register with the site and then you don't have to use the captcha anymore.

I actually registered metaco.in a few days ago to start a business of a similar type.  Looks like I'll have to go with my backup idea.  Nice job though.  With bitcoin expanding so rapidly this kind of overlapping is bound to happen more and more.  Some of the duplicates will either specialize, as you mention, or lose out to better implementations.

Just to let everyone know. I'm currently developing a Merchant Review Image system. Merchants will be able to embed an image on their website which will show their current overall rating.

You may be aware of this, but I get:
Error 503 Service Unavailable
When I go to your site.

Yeah the hosting is abit pants at the moment. It's up most of the time but it seems to get really slow or even down at other times. It seems to be happening when I'm editing the site because it ends up doing loads of database queries... I really need a private development site or something lol. I've been in contact with them and they should be sorting it out. There is a maintenance tomorrow so hopefully that will help. Do you know of any other hosting places that are good and reasonably priced?

Also you can now review Mining Pools and Trading Services such as Mt Gox

I had a lot of problems with my hosting at first.  I'd get 4 or 5 concurrent users and things would crawl.  I use Godaddy right now.  Everyone complains about them, but I've actually had really good experiences with them for the most part.  I did switch to a virtual dedicated server and it solved all my sluggishness problems.  If you sign up for multi-month, you can get like $20 or something for the simplest hardware. 

I'm actually leaving Godaddy, but only because I want to pay all my business expenses in bitcoin.

Ok the site is now on a new hosting provider so it seems much much much faster.
You can now submit reviews for Bitcoin Mining Pools and Bitcoin Trading Websites (ie Mt Gox)

There are now a few merchant images which link to their review page. This allows customers to read or write a review about your company.

Just to let everyone know it may be a good idea to change your password on the site if you used the same as your MtGox password.
Thanks.

Just to let everyone know I'm organising some advertising packages for the website and also competitions for the users.

http://www.bitcoinsreview.com/2011/07/08/progress-and-advertising/

Stay tuned! :)

Hi Noviz, First thanks for providing this service to the bitcoin community, It will surely help to get trust for a lot of business.

I'm posting on this thread because I have some questions, I have about 3 users who left feedback for my business: http://www.bitcoinsreview.com/2011/07/21/btcrow-com/ but after about 24 hours the review is still not shown. In normal time this is not a problem but the point is I have a promo which give 20% lifetime discount when user post feedback for a valid transaction.

So is there a bug or it just take time to moderate ?

Thanks again for this great service :)

Jules
BTCrow.com

I'm really sorry I never replied to you. I have to manually moderate all of the submissions to the site, basically to make sure no one is posting stupid reviews. On top of this I'm the only one who works on the site so it can sometimes take a little while to moderate everything.

Hi thanks for the answer, I really apreciate it.

May I suggest something ?

Is admin of each sites could be able to reply to comment left by users? I think it should be a nice implementation.

To be honest I haven't done much website coding before but I'll have a look into it.
Frankly I think I'm going to totally revamp the site eventually as wordpress has its limitations.

If you need help doing it I'm in.

Ok thanks :) Will try improving a few bits myself and see if I can do the rest as I guess thats the only way to learn ;D

(this is copied from the site)

After a few weeks of inner thought I have decided I'm going to completely remake the site. I feel like bitcoinsreview.com has A LOT of potential and perhaps is not getting used as much as it should be.

As many of you have probably noticed, the site runs on wordpress which is a fantastic tool but really not ideal for developing the type of features I want to implement.  Some of the procedures I have to go through at the moment to simply insert a new website is, put frankly, painful.

As for new features, I'd like to ask you, the users, what you'd like to see added to the website. If you want to contribute just e-mail me at bitcoinsreview@gmail.com or put a post on my thread on bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9245.0

Here is a list of things I'm considering implementing in the new version:

- Review rating system (thumbs up/down style) - This will mean that the processing time of publishing reviews will be quicker simply because users can vote them down if they aren't helpful.

- Better category system with sub-categories - For example, Merchant Shops -> Tangible Products -> Consumables -> Beer... Naturally this will be much more user-friendly for everyone.

- Forum (a few people have suggested this one now).

- Merchant promotion area - Basically on each individual website page the owner of the site will be able to post announcements or promotions for the users of bitcoinsreview.com

- A cleaner website allowing for better user interaction and overall experience.
 
Those are just a few :)

Oh and just to note I'll transfer all the existing reviews and websites across so nothing will be lost.