Review Showcase puts your guest reviews on any page of your site, as a grid, a slider, or a list, with every card linking back to the property the guest stayed in.
What it does #
Your best marketing is written by your guests, but on most sites those reviews only appear on the property page itself. A visitor on your home page, a destination page, or a landing page never sees them. Review Showcase gives you a shortcode, [homerunner-reviews], that places a block of review cards anywhere you can place text: the home page, a “Why book with us” section, a destination page for one island, or a landing page for one type of property.
For example, [homerunner-reviews location="kaanapali" per_property="1" heading="What guests say about Kaanapali"] shows six recent reviews from your Kaanapali properties, no more than one per property, under that heading.
What visitors see:
- A card for each review with the star rating, the guest’s name (in the style your Review Display settings use), the date, the booking channel, the review text, and a “Stayed at” link to the property.
- Long reviews are clamped to a few lines with a Read more toggle.
- As a slider: arrows and page dots, swipe on touch screens, and optional autoplay that pauses while a visitor hovers.
- Optionally the property’s cover image on each card, on top of the text or beside it.
- Optionally a summary line above the cards, such as “4.9 average from 312 guest reviews”, and a “Guests mention” line that counts the topics reviewers bring up most, such as pool or beach.
- Optionally the guest’s initial in a small circle, and the place (location, or city if there is no location) after the property name.
- Optionally a search box above the cards. A visitor types a word such as “pool” or “quiet” and the cards switch to the reviews that mention it, with a Show more button for further matches and a Clear button to go back. When the “Guests mention” topics are on, each topic becomes a button that runs the same search. A search only looks inside the reviews that block already shows, so a search box on a Kaanapali showcase never turns up reviews from another place.
What it never shows: a review you have hidden with Review Visibility, or a review with no text. A review you hide disappears from every showcase on the next page load.
Every card has its own web address anchor (for example #review-123), so you can link straight to one review on the page. If the same review appears in two showcases on one page, only the first card carries the anchor.
How to turn it on #
1. Switch on Review Showcase #
In the HomeRunner Toolkit Hub, open Review Tools and switch on Review Showcase. Nothing changes on your site until you place the shortcode somewhere.
2. Compose your shortcode #
The Review Showcase block in the Hub has a composer. Pick your options in the form and it writes the shortcode for you, leaving out anything still at its default. The live preview above the form is the real block rendering your own reviews, at desktop, tablet, and phone width. Click Copy when it looks right, or Reset to start over. The composer saves nothing, so copy the shortcode before you leave the screen. Controls that do not apply to your current choices stay hidden, such as the slider options while the layout is a grid. Taxonomy filters (location, city, state, type, group, tag) offer a list of your own places and categories to pick from. Hold Cmd or Ctrl to pick more than one.
Above the form, a row of presets fills in a sensible set of options in one click. Each one starts from a clean form, so it replaces whatever you had picked:
- Home page strip: an autoplaying slider of eight reviews rated 4 and up, with the property image and the summary line.
- Property page: the property being viewed, as a list of five with your responses, guest initials, the summary line, topics and a search box.
- Destination page: nine reviews from one location in a three-column grid, with the place line, the summary line, topics and a search box. Pick the location afterward.
- Testimonial wall: twelve five-star reviews of at least 120 characters, in random order, each card its own height, with guest initials.
Fonts and text color in the preview come from the admin screen, so on your live page they follow your theme instead.
If you turn on the summary line or the topics and they do not show in the preview, a note under the preview says why. Your reviews are still being indexed (it shows how many are done), the index is not active on the site, or a few updates are still waiting to be counted.
3. Place it on a page #
Paste the shortcode into any page or post, in a text block or a shortcode block. You can also add the Review Showcase block in the block editor and paste the shortcode into it, or add the Review Showcase element in the YOOtheme page builder, which offers the same four presets. The simplest form, [homerunner-reviews], shows your six newest reviews in three columns.
Settings #
Every option is an attribute on the shortcode. Leave one out to use its default. Places and categories are matched by their short name, the one that appears in the web address (for example kaanapali or condominium).
Which reviews #
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
count | How many cards to show, 1 to 50. Default 6. |
min_rating | Only reviews rated at least this, 1 to 5. Unrated reviews are left out. |
property | Property IDs, comma separated, or current to show the reviews of the property page the visitor is on. |
location, city, state, type, group, tag | Only reviews of properties in these places or categories, comma separated. The same names the Property Grid shortcode uses. |
channel | Only reviews from these booking channels, for example airbnb, vrbo, booking.com, direct. |
min_chars | Leave out reviews shorter than this many characters. |
ids, exclude | Specific reviews to show (in the order you list them) or to leave out, by review ID. |
linked_only | Only reviews that belong to a published property, so every card can link to a listing. On by default; set 0 to include the rest. |
per_property | The most cards any one property may take, so one busy listing does not fill the block. |
sort | newest (default), oldest, rating (highest first, rated reviews only), or random (reshuffled every hour). |
Layout and slider #
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
layout | grid (default), slider, or list (one column). |
columns, columns_tablet, columns_mobile | Cards per row at wide, medium, and narrow widths. Defaults 3, 2, 1. The steps follow the width of the block itself, so a showcase in a narrow column still fits. |
card_height | equal (default) keeps each row of cards level. auto lets a short review stay short. A slider always uses equal heights. |
autoplay | The slider advances by itself. Off by default. It pauses while a visitor hovers or focuses it, stops once they use the arrows or swipe, and stays off for visitors who prefer reduced motion. |
interval | Milliseconds between autoplay steps. Default 6000, minimum 2000. |
arrows, dots | Slider controls, on by default. They appear only when there are more cards than fit. |
loop | The slider wraps from the last page back to the first. On by default. |
Card #
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
show_stars, show_author, show_date, show_channel, show_title, show_property | Show or hide each part of the card. All on by default. |
show_location | Add the property’s place after its name, as plain text next to the link. Off by default. |
show_avatar | Show the guest’s initial in a small circle beside the name. Off by default. A guest with no usable name shows “G”. |
show_response | Show your reply to the review under it. Off by default. |
lines | Clamp the review to this many lines with a Read more toggle. Default 6; 0 shows the whole review. |
link | property (default) links the property name and image; card makes the whole card the link; none renders no links. |
newtab | Open property links in a new tab. Off by default. |
show_image | Show the property’s cover image (its featured image) on the card. Off by default. |
image_position | top (default), left, or right. A side image moves on top when the card gets narrow. |
image_ratio | Image shape as width:height. Default 3:2. |
Section #
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
heading, heading_tag | A heading above the cards and its level (h2 to h5, or div). Write {location} in the heading to insert the name of the place set in location, for example “What guests say about {location}”. Several places are joined with commas, and the token is dropped if no place matches. |
show_summary | A line under the heading with the average rating, a star row, and the review count, for example “4.9 average from 312 guest reviews”. It adds “newest September 2026” when every counted review has a date. It shows nothing when no review matches. Off by default. |
topics | A “Guests mention” line that lists the topics reviewers mention most, with a count for each, for example “Pool (42) · Beach (38)”. Off by default. |
topics_count | How many topics to list, 1 to 12. Default 8. |
search | A search box above the cards. Off by default. Visitors search only the reviews this block shows. With topics on, each topic becomes a button that runs the same search. The box appears once your review index is ready; until then it is left out. |
search_placeholder | The grey hint text in the search box. Default “Search reviews”. |
see_all_url, see_all_text | The link under the cards. Left blank, it points to your Reviews Page when that module is on, and no link shows when it is off. Type none for no link at all. Set your own address to send visitors somewhere else. |
card_style | bordered (default), shadow, or plain. |
align | left (default) or center. |
star_color | Any color for the stars, for example #c9a227. |
class | Extra class names on the block, for your own CSS. |
cache | Minutes the matching list of reviews is remembered. Default 60; 0 turns it off. A hidden or unpublished review disappears at once either way. |
Tips #
- The summary line and the topics come from an index of your reviews that builds in the background. On a site with many reviews, they can take a little while to appear after the feature is first used, and they stay hidden until the numbers are complete.
- A filter that cannot match anything renders nothing at all, so a misspelled location name or
property="current"on a page that is not a property page leaves a blank spot. Check the preview in the composer first. - Hide a review you do not want shown with Review Visibility. Every showcase respects it on the next page load.
- With the Reviews Page switched on, the see-all link finds it for you. Set
see_all_urlonly when you want a different destination. - Guest names follow your Review Display name style.
- Colors and spacing follow your theme. For finer control, the block’s style variables are listed in the Toolkit styling reference.
- Review dates show the calendar date the review was written, whatever your site’s time zone.
- A visitor who searches very quickly sees “Too many searches, wait a minute” and can try again shortly. Searching needs at least two letters.