Review fields explained
Adding or editing a book review will show you fields like this:
Here's an explanation of the purpose of each field:
Book ID
This is the ID number of the book this review is of.
User ID
This is your WordPress user account ID number. It will be auto filled with your user ID number so you usually do not need to change this field. This allows different user accounts on your site to write different reviews (useful for blogs with multiple reviewers).
Review Post ID
This is only relevant if your review "lives" inside a blog post on your WordPress site. If it does, then this is the ID number of that post. This will automatically be filled in for you if you added a review while writing a blog post. Otherwise you need to fill it out manually.
If your review does not live in a blog post then leave this blank.
External Review URL
If your review has been published outside of your WordPress blog (such as on goodreads.com) then you may enter the URL to your review in this box.
Date Written
This is the date you wrote the review. It's only used when building your review analytics to let you know how many reviews you wrote.
Date Published
This is the date your review became public. This is used in the [book-reviews] shortcode. If you leave this field blank then your review will not appear in that shortcode at all. If the date in this field is in the future, then this review will not appear in the [book-reviews] shortcode until that date is reached (it's essentially a "scheduled" review).
Review Text
This text is not available publicly anywhere. It only exists if you want to copy your actual review into that box for your own personal records.
Associated Reading Log
This allows you to associate a reading log with a review. This is required if you want to have a rating associated with your review -- this is where that rating comes from. The idea is:
- You read the book.
- You rate the book (via the reading log).
- You review the book.
- You associate a reading log with the review in order to bring over the rating.
This is done in order to allow you to rate books without needing to review them.