New release: JReviews 6.1.0

JReviews 6.1.0 is here, and it is a substantial update. It has also been a while since we wrote about the JReviews 6 line, so this post rounds up the headline additions: an all-new Site Widgets system, universal widgets, modules and shortcodes to place them anywhere, a new paid checkout experience, redesigned photo and video galleries, interactive maps, richer structured data, and a growing wave of Early Access designs across the front end. We highly recommend updating to take full advantage of everything below.

A brand-new Site Widgets system

The headline feature of 6.1.0 is a completely new Site Widgets system. Instead of juggling separate modules for every job, you now build reusable widgets from a single place in the control panel and display them anywhere on your site. A dedicated Widget Preview page lets you see how every widget type looks, in both light and dark modes, so you can pick the right style before you place it.

The release ships with a rich library of widget types so you can surface content in whatever way fits your design:

• Listings: directories, latest, featured, top rated and more, with selectable card sizes and layouts.
• Comments and Reviews: show the latest activity, filtered by category, listing type or content source.
• Media: photo and video grids pulled straight from your listings.
• Directories and Fields: navigable category trees and drill-down field links that deep-link into search.
• Totals and Reviewer Rank: community stats and leaderboards.
• Calendar: an interactive events widget.
• Search and Filters: live, URL-synced filtering with active filter chips.

Place Site Widgets anywhere: modules, widgets, shortcodes & YOOtheme

Building a widget is only half the story; 6.1.0 makes it easy to display it wherever you want. WordPress gets a new (JReviews) Universal Widget and Joomla gets a new JReviews Universal Module. Each one can render any of your published Site Widgets. Just pick the widget you want from a dropdown, or reference it by its unique ID. Prefer to drop one straight into your content? Every Site Widget is also available as a shortcode, with built-in shortcode support on both platforms.

Migration is straightforward, too. JReviews can import your existing JReviews modules and widgets into Site Widgets (Joomla modules and WordPress widgets), mapping their settings where possible and flagging anything that needs a second look. It can also publish a Site Widget back out as a Joomla module or WordPress widget, copying its position and menu assignments for you. A “Where Used” view and a usage column on the widgets list show exactly where each widget appears across your site.

Deep YOOtheme Pro integration

If you build with YOOtheme Pro, JReviews 6 feels completely native inside the builder. New in 6.1.0 is a Site Widget element that drops any of your published Site Widgets straight into a YOOtheme layout. It joins a deep family of dedicated JReviews elements you can place and style visually: Listing Map and Directions, Rating, Rating Histogram and Detailed Ratings, Write Review and User Reviews, Send Inquiry, Upload Media, Add Favorite, Compare, Claim and Manage listings, add-on elements for Listing Resources, My Lists, Follow and Paid Listings ordering, and a flexible JReviews Output element for any layout you can build.

JReviews plugs straight into YOOtheme’s dynamic content too. Build listing, category and article or post sources backed by live JReviews data, then bind your layouts to listing fields, photos, videos, audio, attachments, media and actions. The result: rich, fully custom directory and listing pages designed visually with real data, with full support for YOOtheme Pro child themes.

A new photo and video gallery experience

Media gets a major visual upgrade. The new photo gallery uses a modern, touch-friendly viewer with a full-screen modal, pinch and click-to-zoom, and full-resolution images. Visitors can like and report photos, view photo info, and jump straight to the related review or comment from the gallery bar. Videos get the same care: the video gallery has been rebuilt on the same modern viewer, crediting the uploader and linking to more from the same member. Image-heavy listings look their best, with media that loads lazily for faster pages.

Sharing is smarter too: the gallery's share buttons update as visitors move between slides, so every photo and video gets its own link, title and rich social preview (Open Graph and X/Twitter cards), which is perfect for driving traffic back to your listings.

A modern checkout for paid listings

The PaidListings addon gives JReviews 6 a redesigned, single-step checkout in the Early Access submission flow. Instead of splitting the process across several steps, visitors pick a plan, enter their billing details and pay in one streamlined view. Payments run through PayPal's modern REST API for faster, more reliable confirmation, while the legacy IPN integration remains available for the older PayPal flow.

Maps: routes with elevation profiles

The headline addition for maps is support for routes. Attach GPX, KML or GeoJSON tracks to a listing and JReviews draws them as interactive routes on the map, with full support for multiple routes on a single map. Every route carries an elevation profile, and a built-in playback control lets visitors scrub a marker along the track, playing, pausing or changing speed, while the distance and elevation readout update in step. It is perfect for trails, tours, travel and real-estate directories. The whole map experience has been rebuilt for JReviews 6 with marker clustering, a full-screen view and a redesigned, mobile-friendly layout, and the map is now available as a Site Widget and a YOOtheme element too.

Richer structured data for better SEO

We have significantly expanded JReviews' Schema.org structured data. JSON-LD now also covers your review and comment detail pages and the “view all reviews” pages, helping search engines understand your reviews and show richer results. A new control-panel UI lets you configure additionalType and additionalProperty schema settings per listing type for precise, standards-compliant markup.

Search, reimagined: the page, filters and widgets

Search across JReviews 6 has been rebuilt, and the facelift reaches well beyond the Advanced Search page: the new search and filter widgets share the same control library. You get a refined keyword input, cleaner custom field controls, and brand-new date and numeric range components, plus Any/All match toggles on multi-option fields, a per-field Clear button, and related-listing autosuggest. When a directory has a single listing type its fields open instantly, and live filtering with active chips now extends to reviews and comments, not just listings.

Early Access: redesigned pages across the front end

With Early Access, you can switch on modern, redesigned versions of JReviews front-end pages from the settings, page by page, as we roll them out. 6.1.0 adds several. This release adds refreshed designs for the directory page, the media list page, and the listing list pages, complete with a layout switcher, table and map split-view layouts, an inline search box and active filter chips. Subcategory navigation, RSS feeds and dark mode all carry across to the redesigned pages. Add-ons can now register their own Early Access features too, so the modern experience keeps growing.

More improvements

• Configurable date presets and rating filtering for the new filter widgets.
• Attachments now display as file cards that surface each file's download count.
• Hardened security for URL-based media uploads.
• Numerous design-system refinements, dark-mode contrast fixes and accessibility polish across the V6 theme.

Full Changelogs

For a comprehensive overview of all new features, bug fixes and improvements, you can read the full changelogs.