Help: XOOPS Poll

The XOOPS Poll module can be used to display interactive survey forms on your site. Each poll can display a question on which visitors can 'vote'. This can be a valuable way to collect feedback from your community. Polls can be configured to allow single or multiple choices and visitors can view the 'results' to date.

No special measures are necessary, follow the standard installation process - extract the xoopspoll folder into the ../modules directory. Install the module through Admin -> System Module -> Modules.

Detailed instructions on installing modules are available in the XOOPS Operations Manual

Additional integration with both the Marquee module and the SmartClone XOOPS modules are included in the extras folder. Copy these plugins to the corresponding folder in those modules to enable support for the XOOPS poll module. Additionally, a patch has been created for the forum module (newbb) to support this version of XOOPS poll. Replace the existing forum module files with the files found in the ./extras/newbb folder.

It is recommended that you delete the ./xoopspoll/extras and ./xoopspoll/test folders from your web server, they are not required for normal operation.

The XOOPS Poll module is very simple to configure and use. Basically you need to:

• Create one or more polls for people to vote on (Polls administration -> Polls)
• Display the Polls block somewhere on your website, this is not required since people can also access polls through the 'Polls' link in the main menu - but displaying the polls block in a prominent location will encourage people to vote)
• Ensure that relevant user groups have access rights to:
  • the Polls module and
  • the Polls block so that they can see it and vote. Detailed instructions on configuring the access rights for user groups are available in the XOOPS Operations Manual
• Most management functions for existing polls are found in Polls administration -> Polls.

eMail Results

XOOPS Poll uses XOOPS preload functionality to initiate sending email results. Once per user session the database will be checked to see if emails need to be sent to the poll author to let them know that the poll has expired (if they chose to be notified).

Poll Visibility

XOOPS Poll has several administrative options to control the visibility of poll results.

never hide results

- the results are always visible to users

hide results until after voting

- will hide the results from a user until they have voted

hide results until poll expires

- will hide the results from all users (whether they have voted or not) until the poll expires

always hide results

- users will not be able to see the results. Results are only visible to administrators in the admin panel

User Voting

There are several checks to eliminate users from being able to vote multiple times in a poll. If anonymous voting is allowed there are instances where malicious users can find ways to vote more than once per poll by circumventing the validation checks however the number of instances of this should be greatly reduced through the checks provided. Here is a summary of the checks performed by the module to reduce duplicate/invalid voting:

• disallow voting on expired or inactive polls
• registered users can only vote once per poll
• unregistered voters can only vote once per poll, per computer (if anon voting is allowed)