Robot Reviews

Lots of robots have come out since 2017, but the front page still shows 2017 stuff.... ?

The forum is still very much alive and that is where all new robots are discussed.

The rest of the site is long overdue for an overhaul and it has not been given the time and attention it deserves. I am working on a replacement, and I hope to have an update with more information in the next few weeks.

Regards,
Craig

Fair enough; I know it's time-consuming to run a site.

Hi, it's been 6 years from the original post now, but I'm wondering about this too.

I've noticed that the main RobotReviews website has had an overhaul not too long ago, and I'm wondering if it has changed ownership anytime within the past few years, or if the overhaul was done by the same people/person who have been running it before.

rimas wrote: ↑December 10th, 2025, 2:25 am Hi, it's been 6 years from the original post now, but I'm wondering about this too.

I've noticed that the main RobotReviews website has had an overhaul not too long ago, and I'm wondering if it has changed ownership anytime within the past few years, or if the overhaul was done by the same people/person who have been running it before.

Craig is still the owner and he was the one who did the upgrade.

CodaCM wrote: ↑December 10th, 2025, 12:57 pm Craig is still the owner and he was the one who did the upgrade.

Thanks!

I asked this question because the website doesn't look much like a review website anymore, but looks more like a collection of affiliate links to buy a robot vacuum instead, so I thought maybe some robot-selling business bought the website and is now using it as an ad stand of sorts.

For example, sorting vacuum list by "Highest rating" seems to do nothing useful, as robots with and without ratings, as well as with and without "Expert scores", are just listed in a seemingly random order. Also, there's no custom filtering functionality (e.g. by price or by features) other than the two predefined filters. I don't see any meaningful reviews either. It's just confusing and outright sus.

For example, the very first robot in the list on the home page is Roomba j9+, which boasts an "expert score" of 9.5. However, when I visit its page and click on the "Read review" link next to that score, all I get is the product description. The only reviews on that page are the unstructured ones at the bottom, which give an average rating of 4 stars out of 5. Yet, this rating is not even indicated anywhere on the front page.

I'm looking for a vacuum to replace my Roomba i7 with, but, um, it almost looks like I'd be better off reading customer reviews for specific robots on Amazon than expect honest in-depth enthusiast reviews here anymore.

Thanks!

I asked this question because the website doesn't look much like a review website anymore, but looks more like a collection of affiliate links to buy a robot vacuum instead, so I thought maybe some robot-selling business bought the website and is now using it as an ad stand of sorts.

For example, sorting vacuum list by "Highest rating" seems to do nothing useful, as robots with and without ratings, as well as with and without "Expert scores", are just listed in a seemingly random order. Also, there's no custom filtering functionality (e.g. by price or by features) other than the two predefined filters. I don't see any meaningful reviews either. It's just confusing and outright sus.

For example, the very first robot in the list on the home page is Roomba j9+, which boasts an "expert score" of 9.5. However, when I visit its page and click on the "Read review" link next to that score, all I get is the product description. The only reviews on that page are the unstructured ones at the bottom, which give an average rating of 4 stars out of 5. Yet, this rating is not even indicated anywhere on the front page.

I'm looking for a vacuum to replace my Roomba i7 with, but, um, it almost looks like I'd be better off reading customer reviews for specific robots on Amazon than expect honest in-depth enthusiast reviews here anymore.

I don’t think the review site gets updated really any more, it’s mostly the forum part. I would keep it updated but I don’t have access to the squarespace page for this.

Hmm, have you asked for access?

If I were the sole editor here, and didn't have time to maintain the website, and someone with the "Most Active Forum Mod" badge came up to me to offer their help, at least I'd be more than happy.

That's totally on me. The main site hasn't been updated in years and the only active part is the forum. When I migrated to a new host in 2023 I did fully migrate to the development server which has the template I had been planning to use, but it is still in the unfinished state that you see now.

Honestly I have no excuses. But if anyone is willing to help I promise I will do what I can to actually make the site useful again.

@robotreviews, having no time or motivation to work on what is essentially your old pet project is an excuse enough, in my opinion.

But, if you're still willing to keep improving it and are okay with accepting external help, you might want to build a list of things that need to be done and share it (here or elsewhere). Also helpful would be to see what vision you have for the website, if any.

I could probably help with migrating old articles, if this was one of the items in the list. Perhaps also review the robots shown on the front page (right now one of these "robots" is actually a multicooker ). Maybe something else too, like programming, although I'm reluctant to formally commit to anything because I know myself well enough and am aware that my enthusiasm often doesn't last.

Vacuum Wars makes some great reviews on robots or vacuums in general so working with them might be a cool idea.

The initial goal was to automate as much as possible so that the site could add new robots automatically into a database were people could find, review and compare all new and older robots based on the specifications and features that they wanted.

Importing old sections was on the list, but the old system was an older version of drupal and the new system is on wordpress. I originally had a lot of custom hacky code linking the drupal and wordpress databases which made it very hard to upgrade the old site.

I actually need to migrate the site again to a more stable host so I'm going to look into it further this weekend and see what else needs to be done.

I really do appreciate the help!

Hi @robotreviews!
The goal sounds quite like what I would have expected from a site like this.
This weekend is already over for me, but feel free to ping me should you want any help with migration. You should be able to see my email since you're the admin here anyway.
Although I don't really hold WordPress in high regard. Its hooks-based code, database structure, "everything is a post" pattern, and the prevalence of freemium plugins with constant annoying reminders to upgade make the experience of using or working with it quite sour.

You're not wrong. It's much harder to do certain things in WordPress because of those limitations, but the draw for me was how well it's supported and how much easier upgrading to new versions was.

With the plugins I'm currently using, it does have the ability to allow site members to add any robot through a front facing web interface, which was part of the plan do that even if I weren't around most things could be done by the members.

I'll send you a message tomorrow afternoon. If anyone else would like to help please message me as well.

robotreviews wrote: ↑December 15th, 2025, 1:36 am You're not wrong. It's much harder to do certain things in WordPress because of those limitations, but the draw for me was how well it's supported and how much easier upgrading to new versions was.

With the plugins I'm currently using, it does have the ability to allow site members to add any robot through a front facing web interface, which was part of the plan do that even if I weren't around most things could be done by the members.

I'll send you a message tomorrow afternoon. If anyone else would like to help please message me as well.

I’d be open anytime to help too.

One of the biggest frustrations with using Wordpress is how limited you are in filtering. There's no easy way to sort by features, so I went through various plugins trying to come up with a solution. The one I have mostly works, but it's very wonky.

Any ideas on how to make this easier?

I was looking through the product reviews and WOW, thats a lot of advert/scam messages being filtered

We do get A LOT of spam attempts!

Akismet should help fight comment spam.

I would also suggest using the ALTCHA Spam Protection plugin (v1, not v2!) for submissions by users who aren't logged in.

As for filtering, I can't answer that, and without knowing what the stack in use is, I wouldn't even know what to look for.

How did you decide to migrate to WP in the first place? Was Drupal too troublesome to maintain?

The spam is being caught, there's just a ton in the filter that hasn't been cleared.

Drupal was great, it was a really powerful backend. I don't know if it's different know but originally each major version upgrade required a ton of work if you had any custom code at all. I chose wordpress specifically because it's so well supported and custom code can be separated into a theme or a plugin but working around the limitations of wordpress is challenging.

The plugins I have right now mostly work fine, it's honestly just filling in all the robots and specifications that I got overwhelmed with. I did try to fill them in automatically from places like Amazon, but I never perfected the process hence why there's a multicooker in there!

I'm going to try to go over it over the next few days to see what else really needs work.