Getting started with SWPL Reviews
Last updated July 10, 2026
What SWPL Reviews does
SWPL Reviews turns WooCommerce’s plain product reviews into a review engine:
- Customer photos and video – shoppers can attach pictures (and one video) of the product they received to their review. Real customer photos are the most convincing content a product page can have.
- Moderation with the media in front of you – every review carrying media waits for your approval on the Moderation tab, pictures and video shown right there. Approve publishes it; reject removes it and deletes the files.
- The review-request email – the reason reviews actually arrive. After an order completes, one email goes to the customer (after a delay you choose) listing what they bought, each item with a direct link to its review form.
Everything works out of the box: activate, and the review form on every product page gains the photo and video fields, media reviews start queuing for your approval, and completed orders start scheduling their request email.
Installation
- Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, upload the plugin zip, and click Install Now, then Activate. WooCommerce is required, and products need reviews enabled in WooCommerce as usual.
- When licensing arrives for your copy, enter your license key where prompted. Until then the plugin runs unlocked.
The five-minute tour
- Open any product and scroll to the reviews. The review form now has “Add photos” (and “Add a video”) fields.
- Submit a review with a photo. It does not appear publicly – it shows up under SWPL Reviews > Moderation with the photo visible, and the moderation email address gets a notification.
- Click Approve and publish. The review appears on the product page with its photo as a click-to-zoom thumbnail.
- On the Settings tab, press Send a test email to me to see the review-request email exactly as a customer would.
Initial setup – the settings that matter
- Photo and video uploads – the master switch for review media (recommended: on). Maximum photos per review: default 3, hard ceiling 5 – three covers the useful cases (the product, the product in use, a detail). Video on reviews: one video per review, playing right in the reviews list once approved. Video size limit: default 50 MB (roughly a minute of phone footage), range 5 to 200; your hosting’s own upload limit also applies and wins if lower.
- Moderation notification email – where the “a review with media is waiting” notification goes. Defaults to the site admin address; use the inbox of whoever checks reviews.
- Review-request email – leave it on; this is where reviews come from, since almost no customer returns to review unprompted. Days to wait: default 14 (the customer should have the product in hand and have lived with it), range 1 to 90. Subject and introduction text are yours to word – short and plain beats clever, and emptying a field restores the default. Then use Send a test email to me: it builds the real email and sends it to your own address, never emails a customer, and marks nothing as sent.
Who sees what
- Customers only ever see approved reviews and their media.
- Reviews with media are always held for you first, no matter how your WordPress discussion settings are configured – a customer photo never goes public without a human look.
- Text-only reviews follow your normal WordPress/WooCommerce comment approval settings, exactly as before.
Frequently asked questions
No upload fields on the review form
Check “Let customers attach photos and video to reviews” on the Settings tab, and confirm the product has reviews enabled in WooCommerce.
A review’s words are fine but one photo is not
Use “Remove this file” under that specific photo on the Moderation tab – the review and its other media stay.
Request emails are not arriving
Open the order in WooCommerce and read its order notes – every scheduling and sending step, and the exact reason for any skip, is recorded there. Delivery itself is handled by your site’s email or SMTP plugin, so check its log too.
Can a customer send an enormous video?
No – the size limit is enforced twice, in the browser before the upload wastes the customer’s time and again on the server. The review form also states the photo limit and refuses extra files on the spot.