New Story feature - polls

Hi all,

Starting on the 7th December we will be implementing a new feature for the library, in story polls.  This new feature will allow you to get an idea of what the readers are looking from you the writer.

Take for example you have written several chapters of a story and you are unsure how you want to progress with it, you can add a multi-option poll at the end of the story for readers to vote on what they think you should do. another example would be if you had multiple protagonists you can have a vote on who should be prioritised in the next chapter.

At this time we are not going to allow it on existing stories in the library only new stuff.

How to get a poll in your story?

You can't do it your self, it will be done by an admin when the story is published so you need to include the following information at the end of the story

Poll question and the poll options, 

You can have as many options as you want but we are going to at this time limit the number of polls to one per story, if it takes off we might allow multiple polls per story but for now one will have to do.

This is still a work in progress so expect some bugs, again if it takes off then we will look at better polling software which might incur a cost to the site but if it's liked by members then it's something that we can look at.

Fats

Great work, Fats, as always!

Stay tuned for a new story that will utilize this new feature.  Cloudchaoz, you paying attention?  

ElF

can I just say that the poll in story feature has been a success. in 24 hours each poll has received over 100 votes EACH.

Fats

in the short time that the polls have been active, there have been 694 votes over the 3 polls that are active.

It's a feature that has a future here.

Fats

Can you vote more than once - Yes you can, at a rate of 1 vote every 12 hours.  In my OP I mentioned that this was an experiment and depending on how popular it is will depend on what I do with the feature.  the polling software currently in use is very basic but it's free and has unlimited polling, it looks like it's going to be a very useful and popular feature so I will look over the Xmas period at a better alternative to the current software, I will need to discuss with lfan about the finances to see what budget I have to buy better software or might have to look at a better free software.

less than 10% of the votes are duplicate votes and what I can do is edit the polls to change the time between votes from 12 hours to say 100 hours.

I'm glad that the polling idea seems to be a success it will help me look at future developments exclusive for the library.

Fats

fats wrote: Can you vote more than once - Yes you can, at a rate of 1 vote every 12 hours.  In my OP I mentioned that this was an experiment and depending on how popular it is will depend on what I do with the feature.  the polling software currently in use is very basic but it's free and has unlimited polling, it looks like it's going to be a very useful and popular feature so I will look over the Xmas period at a better alternative to the current software, I will need to discuss with lfan about the finances to see what budget I have to buy better software or might have to look at a better free software.

less than 10% of the votes are duplicate votes and what I can do is edit the polls to change the time between votes from 12 hours to say 100 hours.

I'm glad that the polling idea seems to be a success it will help me look at future developments exclusive for the library.

Fats

I think we should go for 168 hours (i.e. a week).

Hi all,

I'm aware of the current issues over the polling software and its security limits that allow multiple voting by a single user to take place.  As I've said in the OP the software I choose was free and was selected to see if the idea behind the in story polls was one that people wanted to take forward, as it turns out its one that has been very popular so with that in mind I've been looking at alternatives to the current set up and there are currently 2 options that I'm looking at.

The first is the number one most voted upon in the Joomla extensions and that's Sexy polls, it has all the features that we need but the biggest sticking point is the cost which at $79 would be our biggest cost after the hosting costs for the server.

2glux.com/projects/sexypolling

The other one is Advanced pool again it's one of the most popular ones but comes in at a more reasonable $20 it has most if not all the features of sexy polling but at a more reasonable cost.

extstore.com/joomla-extensions/components/advanced-poll

I've included the links to the software for people to try out and give their feedback on, please do try out the demos on the sites and give me your views, I will have a chat with the CFO (lfan) to see what we can get in terms of costs and what we will need to do to look at extra donations.

Thanks for making the in story polls a success.

Fats

fats wrote: Hi all,

I'm aware of the current issues over the polling software and its security limits that allow multiple voting by a single user to take place.  As I've said in the OP the software I choose was free and was selected to see if the idea behind the in story polls was one that people wanted to take forward, as it turns out its one that has been very popular so with that in mind I've been looking at alternatives to the current set up and there are currently 2 options that I'm looking at.

The first is the number one most voted upon in the Joomla extensions and that's Sexy polls, it has all the features that we need but the biggest sticking point is the cost which at $79 would be our biggest cost after the hosting costs for the server.

2glux.com/projects/sexypolling

The other one is Advanced pool again it's one of the most popular ones but comes in at a more reasonable $20 it has most if not all the features of sexy polling but at a more reasonable cost.

extstore.com/joomla-extensions/components/advanced-poll

I've included the links to the software for people to try out and give their feedback on, please do try out the demos on the sites and give me your views, I will have a chat with the CFO (lfan) to see what we can get in terms of costs and what we will need to do to look at extra donations.

Thanks for making the in story polls a success.

Fats

we should  enough in the kitty from the last pledge drive to cover prob......lemme know

elf