I'd like to find and integrate a simple web poll for the fedoraproject.org landing page. By simple I mean, just a cookie to make sure people can't vote more than once and a page to view the results.
It would be nice if this poll could just be included in the main page via an iframe or javascript. The point being that our home page isn't rendered, but does have that piece as dynamic content to the user. This would be nice to get done by Fedora 8, but there's other stuff to do, this is an F9 piece.
I looked for a Fedora package by using multiple repoqueries but came up empty.
At SourceForge.net, I queried "+python +poll" and also came up empty.
At SourceForge.net, I queried "poll" and received 70 results. The ones that looked promising are written in Perl or PHP. Some use flat files and some use MySQL. I start by looking at the packages in the order listed and post the results here.
Presto Poll 5.0
License: GNU General Public License (GPL) PHP License
Lastest File: 2005-08-12
PHP: php-5.2.4-3
I found the documentation to be sparse at best. I had a minor problem setting it up and posted a message to the SourceForge help forum on 4-Jan-2008 and have not received a response yet. I also noted that some one else had posted a problem on 24-Dec-2007 and had also not received a response. I was able to fix the problem. It was a directory permissions problem.
I was able to create a poll fairly easily. I was not able to vote a second time. If I went back to the poll site after voting, I was not given the option to vote and was simply shown the current number of votes. The software screens by IP address. It uses the file ip.txt to keep track of IP addresses that have voted. The name of this file is configurable via the admin page.
I was able to setup a second/future poll on the admin page. At day later, I went back to the admin page and made it the current poll. The results of the previous poll were not saved anywhere that I saw. Also when I went to the poll site, I was not able to vote because the ip.txt file had not been reset.
I'm not sure if it's a requirement but I would rather have a package that kept the results of previous polls. This probably requires the use of a database which this package does not support.
PHP Poll 0.96-1
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Latest File: 2006-05-21
Description from SourceForge: PHPPOLL is a simple poll system in PHP and myql. It has an e-mail confirmation (crypted) and an admin-panel. Installation info and admin panel are now in both English and Italian language. PHPPOLL is free open source.
Uses: MySQL Requires php-mysql and php-pdo packages. I had to manually create a database and a user.
This appears to be a system for voting not poll taking. There is not place to enter a question with possible answers. The software asks you to enter candidates.
Simple Poll Administrator
Latest File: 2007-07-25
Description from SourceForge: This project is intended to be a single Perl cgi script capable of administering a simple, browser based, multiple question, multiple choice poll for mall audiences such as during a presentation or lecture served directly from the presenter's computer.
Language: Perl
Uses: MySQL
I installed the program as instructed making some minor changes to keep files in separate directory. I created the database and associated tables with grants. When I go to the Web page (simple_poll/index.html), the following appears on the page: No Current Poll Available
There are no instructions on how to setup a poll.
skPoll
Latest File: 2003-04-29
Description from SourceForge.net:
PHP web-based application that allows a website admin to easily install a poll script on their website. skPoll is a faster, smarter, more efficient alternative to other poll scripts.
Download: skPoll-1.0.1.zip
Language: PHP, JavaScript
Requires: mySQL
This is the best package that I've tested so far. The documentation was easy to follow. It gave me enough information to easily setup and administer a poll.
It would not let me vote twice. It keeps track of who voted via cookies (skpoll_already_submitted_vote_pollid and skpoll_already_submitted_vote). There are ways around this but I don't know of a really good way to do this. Besides, it's only a poll not a vote.
Pros: It's fairly easy to use. The documentation is good. I had no problems administering the polls.
Cons: The UI could use a little cleaning up. The fonts on the admin pages seem a little small. The buttons don't look like buttons. No visibility to old polls.
One of the more recent and interesting developments with this is that people have been requesting wordpress instances, not just community people but also Red Hat magazine. It turns out wordpress has a great polling plugin that A) integrates nicely with it and B) has a very simple way to include the polls into other sites (for example, fedoraproject.org, start.fedoraproject.org or even peoples personal blogs)
fchiulli, would you mind taking a look at the wordpress / poll combo?
I installed wordpress via yum. I then downloaded and activated the wp-poll plug-in. This was one of several poll plug-ins for wordpress. I picked it because it had the highest rating by users. It also had the most number of ratings/reviews. Overall, I was very happy with this combo. I never had to touch a piece of code. It was all handled via GUIs. It does not allow you to vote more than once. It looks like it does this via a cookie. At least I found one that looked like it. It also allows you to archive polls with some minor setup. It also has the option to allow voters to pick more than one item. The admin controls how many items a user can select. You can also specify when the poll is available. I did not specifically test this option.
This is sort of blocking on the WP stuff. Moving to F10
Moving to F11.
This is still waiting on WP-MU. See ticket #178.
http://www.limesurvey.org/ might be another option if someone can package it.
This is still blocking on WP stuff. Moving to F12.
zikula will have a couple poll modules, which should be in cvs now or soon, I finished the package reviews a few days ago, you might ask Sparks or ke4qqq about it.
If you have a wordpress-mu plugin that you would like installed, let me know, and I can look into packaging it (or if you could package it that would be great), and I'll see about getting it added to blogs.fedoraproject.org
Status update: At the suggestion of Mike McGrath, I installed zikula on pt16. I pretty much followed the directions at: https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=How_to_set_up_a_Zikula_sandbox. These directions say to install (via yum) the zikula-fedora-fasauth package. I did not find that package. I did however install the zikula-module-fedora-fasauth package. I'm not sure if that's a typo in the instructions or not.
I also installed the zikula-module-Polls package using yum. This installs the Polls zikula module.
The first thing that I noticed after logging into zikula was that the fasauth module was not listed. This might be something for someone to look at later.
I created a test poll and tried it out. Based on the original criteria of a poll, this one falls because it allows you to vote more than once. It allows you to vote once a day.
The next step is to install the zikula-module-advanced_polls package and try it.
I installed the zikula-module-advanced_polls package. When I logged onto zikula and went to the Modules page, I did not see it. I needed to click on the 'Regenerate List' button. Both the Advanced Polls and the FAS module were then available. This module has several nice features/options: start date/time, stop date/time, authorization method, recurring poll, single/multiple selection. One nit - it appears that the start and stop times are UTC but it doesn't say that.
I did run into a problem when I created a poll. After I entered all the initial information on the Create Poll page, I click on the 'Create Poll' button and got an error: We're sorry. The page you requested, /zikula/index.php?module=Advanced%20Polls&type=admin&func=create, doesn't exist on "Fedora Test Site for Polls".
If I click on the 'Back' button, the new page says that the poll was created. But at this point I had not entered any options/selections for the poll. I had to edit the poll to add the options to the poll. I'm not sure if this is a packaging problem or a module problem. But we'll need to get this fixed before/if we decide to deploy it.
Does anyone know who the packager is?
Contacting Mel Chua about the problem.
Also tried to change the milestone to Fedora 14 but it's not an option in the pull-down.
Move to Fedora 14.
Posted the problem on the logistics mailing list. I received the following two responses from Drak: 1: Are you using the latest version of Advanced_Polls http://community.zikula.org/module-Extensions-display-ot-component-componentid-291.htm
Only this version is compatible with Zikula 1.2.x as far as I am aware.
2: Ya'll need to update to Zikula 1.2.3 also
I received the following response from David Nalley: Frank - you want to look at Eric Christensen's package that's in updates-testing iirc - that's the only version of that module that will work with the version being used by infra.
Is this still wanted, as it has been abandoned without any comment?
Lets just close this out now. We can re-open if the need hits us again.
Related to this is https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/1958 which is limesurvey, which is still being working on.
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