EmDash Rating

A star rating plugin for EmDash CMS. Let visitors rate any post with 1–5 stars, see live averages, and manage all votes from a built-in admin dashboard.

Features

• 5-star widget — renders on every post page, fully styled with your chosen colour and size
• Per-post stats — average rating and vote count displayed next to the widget
• Admin dashboard — three-tab UI: Ratings, Categories, Settings
  • Ratings tab — paginated table of all votes with post slug, stars, IP, date
  • Categories tab — aggregated stats grouped by post slug prefix (e.g. dental-tips/post → dental-tips)
  • Settings tab — colour palette, custom hex input, size picker, success message, duplicate-vote protection, Schema.org toggle
• Dashboard widget — total votes + top-rated posts summary on the EmDash home screen
• Duplicate vote protection — blocks multiple votes from the same IP per post
• Schema.org structured data — injects AggregateRating JSON-LD for rich search snippets
• Export / Import — download all votes as CSV, or paste CSV to bulk-import votes
• Cloudflare Workers compatible — no Node.js builtins, runs in V8 isolates

Installation

From the marketplace

1. Go to Admin → Plugins and search for EmDash Rating
2. Click Install
3. The plugin activates automatically and seeds default settings

Manual (local development)

npm install emdash-rating

In astro.config.mjs:

import { emDashRatingPlugin } from "emdash-rating";
import emdash from "emdash/astro";

export default defineConfig({
  integrations: [
    emdash({
      plugins: [emDashRatingPlugin()],
    }),
  ],
});

Usage

Front-end widget

The rating widget is injected automatically on any page that includes the EmDash page:inject hook. For Astro sites, add the widget HTML to your post template:

<!-- src/pages/posts/[slug].astro -->
<div class="post-rating" id="post-rating" data-slug={slug}>
  <div class="rating-header">
    <span class="rating-label">Rate this post</span>
    <span class="rating-summary" id="rating-summary"></span>
  </div>
  <div class="rating-stars" id="rating-stars" role="group" aria-label="Rate this post">
    {[1,2,3,4,5].map((n) => (
      <button type="button" class="rating-star" data-value={n} aria-label={`${n} star${n !== 1 ? 's' : ''}`}>
        <svg viewBox="0 0 24 24" aria-hidden="true">
          <path d="M12 2l3.09 6.26L22 9.27l-5 4.87 1.18 6.88L12 17.77l-6.18 3.25L7 14.14 2 9.27l6.91-1.01L12 2z"/>
        </svg>
      </button>
    ))}
  </div>
  <p class="rating-feedback" id="rating-feedback" aria-live="polite"></p>
</div>

The widget script fetches settings and stats from the plugin API on page load and wires up click/hover interactions automatically.

Public API endpoints

| Method | Path | Description | |--------|------|-------------| | GET | /_emdash/api/plugins/emdash-rating/public/post?slug=<slug> | Fetch settings + stats for a post | | POST | /_emdash/api/plugins/emdash-rating/public/vote | Submit a vote { postSlug, stars } |

GET response example:

{
  "data": {
    "settings": {
      "starColor": "#f59e0b",
      "starSize": "md",
      "successText": "Thanks for your rating!",
      "schemaEnabled": true,
      "schemaType": "BlogPosting"
    },
    "stats": {
      "postSlug": "my-post",
      "totalVotes": 12,
      "totalStars": 52,
      "averageRating": 4.3,
      "distribution": { "1": 0, "2": 1, "3": 1, "4": 5, "5": 5 },
      "updatedAt": "2026-04-09T10:00:00.000Z"
    }
  }
}

POST vote body:

{ "postSlug": "my-post", "stars": 4 }

POST vote success response:

{
  "data": {
    "success": true,
    "message": "Thanks for your rating!",
    "stats": { "totalVotes": 13, "averageRating": 4.3, "..." }
  }
}

POST vote duplicate response:

{
  "data": {
    "error": "already_voted",
    "message": "You have already rated this post."
  }
}

Configuration

All settings are managed from Admin → EmDash Rating → Settings.

| Setting | Default | Description | |---------|---------|-------------| | Star colour | #f59e0b (Amber) | Fill colour for highlighted stars. Choose from 10 presets or enter any hex code. | | Star size | md (34px) | Star size: sm 24px, md 34px, lg 46px, xl 58px | | Success message | Thanks for your rating! | Text shown to the visitor after they vote | | Prevent duplicate votes by IP | true | Blocks more than one vote per IP address per post | | Enable Schema.org structured data | true | Injects AggregateRating JSON-LD into the page <head> | | Schema.org type | BlogPosting | The @type used in the JSON-LD: BlogPosting, Article, LocalBusiness, Product, or Recipe |

Live preview

In the Settings tab, clicking a colour swatch or size button immediately updates both the admin preview image and saves the value — no separate Save click needed for colour and size. The Save All Settings button saves the success message, duplicate-vote toggle, and Schema.org options.

Export & Import

Export

1. Go to Admin → EmDash Rating → Ratings or Settings
2. Click Export CSV
3. Copy the CSV text from the panel and save as a .csv file

CSV format:

id,postSlug,stars,ip,userAgent,votedAt,edited
"1234-abc","my-post",4,"203.0.113.1","Mozilla/5.0...","2026-04-09T10:00:00.000Z",false

Import

1. Go to Admin → EmDash Rating → Settings → Import / Export
2. Paste your CSV (including the header row) into the text area
3. Click Import Votes

The importer skips rows with missing or invalid data and reports how many were imported vs skipped. Stats are rebuilt automatically for all affected posts.

Dashboard widget

The EmDash Rating Overview widget appears on the EmDash admin home screen and shows:

• Total votes across all posts
• Top 5 highest-voted posts with their average rating

Schema.org structured data

When enabled, the plugin injects an AggregateRating block into the page <head> after a vote is recorded or when existing stats are loaded:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "name": "My Post Title",
  "url": "https://example.com/posts/my-post",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.3",
    "bestRating": "5",
    "worstRating": "1",
    "ratingCount": 12
  }
}

The schema is only injected when at least one vote exists for the post.

Storage

The plugin uses two storage collections:

| Collection | Description | |------------|-------------| | votes | One document per vote — stores postSlug, stars, ip, userAgent, votedAt, edited | | stats | One document per post — pre-aggregated totalVotes, totalStars, averageRating, distribution |

Stats are rebuilt synchronously on every vote submission and on import, so reads are always fast.

Capabilities

| Capability | Reason | |------------|--------| | page:inject | Injects the rating widget and Schema.org JSON-LD into post pages |

Changelog

1.0.0

• Initial release
• 5-star voting widget with live colour and size preview
• Admin dashboard with Ratings, Categories, and Settings tabs
• Duplicate vote protection by IP
• Schema.org AggregateRating structured data
• CSV export and import
• Dashboard overview widget