Great poll, terrible support, but...

Here's my experience with the poll script.
- first, I downloaded it, of course;
- then, there were two options: to use or not to use mysql
- well, I know nothing about mysql, although my server has the feature, and so I decided to give it a shot first; if it didn't work, I'd go for the txt version.
- the stupid readme-txt file just says: edit the config file and then call install.php from your server.
- well, I'm stupid, when dealing with php and mysql and the like, so the readme.txt should not be stupid as well, it should be intended for stupid people like me but, no, it's intended for experts, and I figured why later
- so, I edited the config file, named 'config.inc.php': all I needed to know was (1) my database name, (2) my user name and (3) the password to mysql in my server. Thanks Heaven I knew all this, so I edited the file. I left "localhost" as "localhost".
- then I thought: if I must call install.php from my server, then, it means I have to upload it. So, I uploaded ALL the files extracted from the distribution file (from the "db" folder), keeping the folder structure as it was originally. ASCII transfer for all txt files (like all .php, .shtml, .html, .sql and of course .txt files). All the .gif files should be uploaded as binary.
- I uploaded all of them to the folder http://www.mydomain.com/poll, to follow, as it was said, the stupid readme.txt file (remember to keep the original folder structure!!).
- then I entered this address in my browser: http://www.mydomain.com/poll/install.php (of course you must change "mydomain.com" with the information about your domain. To my happiness, a dialog showed up asking me for a password and a user name. I entered them (created them) and then an installation wizard started. All that came after was very straight forward, no error, no problem at all, running smooth. I was astonished. When I received the last message, that the install was successful, I thought: the guy who did this is really good.
- during the installation I noticed an interesting thing: the licence agreement: this script IS ONLY FREE for non-commercial use and this information is NOWHERE in this site. Only by installing it, you get to know that it is NOT THAT free.
- well, my site is non-commercial, so, let's procede. But that's not a good thing to do, to omit and important information.
- so, I started playing around with the control panel. It was easy to customize a poll for me, my first one. I created a new template and using this template I set up the new poll. It was working fine in the preview windows.
- first tip: DO NOT DELETE the three sample polls you have in your control panel, as soon as you install it, because these polls are very useful when using the demos and the demos are necessary to understand how to make the poll show up in an html file.
- after I had my poll okay, I had to merge it seemlessly to my main page, in my site. That stupid help button of control panel DOES NOT help you at all and I know why: because this is free software (for non-commercial use) and to get support you MUST PAY. It makes sense, although it is made in a way that it's not very fair, in my opinion. German way of doing things...
- So, make a blank html page, insert the code that the help button tells you to insert, change its extension to .php and upload it to your server, in the admin folder, for example (although it must work in any folder inside your server).
- it was easy to make it work in an .php page, but I couldn't find a way to make it appear as it was in my customised template. The poll was always in the default template.
- it took me some time to learn that the tricks were in the demos. Take a careful look at the demos, specially the first one, to know how to make your poll look like a template. So, I learnt it. I'm using a customized popup template, so I had to add some extra php code in my test page so whenever it is loaded, it's always the questions that are show, never the results.
- remember that the configuration of the poll and the test with a blank .php page (blank means only with the poll) and looking at the demos should be done online, unless you have a personal server in your computer, with mysql (not my case!).
- when everything was working fine, I decided to merge the php code from the test page to the correct location of my main page, where the poll should merge. This was easy.
- then, I tested it in a real situation, in my main page, and it worked fine. But I had a problem, my main page was always a .htm page and now it was a .php page, and I had to change dozens of links to this main page. Sh*t!!, I thought, there has to be a way to keep it as an .htm file.
- then I came to this forum and looking at past messages, I found a treasury: a guy teaching how to make the server understand an .htm file as a .php file, without the need to rename the file. All I had to do was to add an entry in the .htaccess file of my server, I don't remember it now, but if you want, take a look at past messages. It's something like AddEntry bla bla bla
- So, my conclusion: this system poll rocks. The supports sucks. But, that's how the makers want it to be, I guess, so, if anyone wants a support, pay for it! It makes sense: to give support takes a lot of time and nobody wants to waste a lot of time without making money.
Anyway, thank you guys, the makers of the poll.

8O 8O 8O

Nice post! New users don't despair, there is quite a bit of knowledge tucked away in this board - you just have to search back through the posts to find it.

If you have a problem with:

- images displaying
- embedding your poll in a web page

Then you will find the answers in this board. I did.

Alternatively, you can use Survey Says ( www.pingpackets.com/apps/perl/surveysays/ ) which is pretty full-featured and well documented to help installation newbies. And it's not php so you don't have any html issues.

I've tried SurveySays before trying Advanced Poll. Well, I couldn't manage to make it work. I have tried a few scripts written in perl, using cgi, and never was able to make just one of them to work. Although the scripts from this site are not well documented, I found way easier to use php than perl and cgi-bin. As said by the firts anonymous replier, this forum can help, that's why I decided to post my experience, because it helped me when I needed help. For someone with experience in html, is not that difficult to "understand", or at least, have an idea, of what a php code is doing, and so make the necessary adjustments in the code so to make it fit exactly what you need. Todya, I was able to make the daily stats script to work. Very cute script.

I 'think" it can be done... does anyone have any experience setting up a poll with more than one question, and or with a structured sequence (nested questions)?

Did manage to get a basic poll working, after renaming the extension to .php

But that's suipposed to be one of the great features about PHP, being able to embed your php coding within an HTML file!

Time to visit php.org or something I guess...

mbright1 wrote:
Did manage to get a basic poll working, after renaming the extension to .php

But that's suipposed to be one of the great features about PHP, being able to embed your php coding within an HTML file!

you can do this by creating a .htaccess file