There's an example poll on this very page! Why not vote to see how it works? After you vote you can see the percentage breakdown of each choice.
You can restrict polls to registered users, or allow anyone to answer them. As the administrator, you can see a full breakdown of the users who have answered your poll.
To enable the application, go to the Content Management tab of the administration pages, then go to the Applications page, and click the Enable button next to Polls. Unlike other applications it doesn't appear in the main menu on your website - you use the Polls includelet to polls to pages. See the Adding Polls to Pages section below.
Once enabled, you can get to the administration pages for the application from within the administration pages for the website. Go to the Content Management tab, and click on Polls in the Site Map.
Creating a Poll
From the Polls administration pages, click Add Poll.
- Give the poll a name (for your own reference), and a question to ask visitors.
- Choose start and end dates, outside which visitors will not be able to vote.
- If you select Requires Registration then users must be logged in to be able to vote, otherwise anonymous users can vote.
- Click Save.
Once you have created the poll, you can start adding questions to it.
- Click on Insert to add a new choice.
- Once you have one choice, you can either click Insert to add a new choice at the start of the list, or click Insert After to add one after an existing choice.
- You can rearrange choices by clicking on Move Up.
Adding Polls to Pages
Once you have created a poll, you must add it to a page for it to be visible to your website visitors.
- Go to the Layout tab of the page that you want the poll to appear on.
- Click on Add Includelet in the column that you want the poll.
- Select Poll from the list of includelets.
- In the includelet configuration, select your Poll in the Poll to Display pop-down list.
- Save the changes, and then publish the page.
Voting Multiple Times
If a registered user votes they will not be able to vote again in the same poll.
If your poll allows anonymous votes then when a user casts a vote a cookie will be stored in their browser. As long as the cookie exists they will not be able to vote again. However, if they use a different browser, or clear out their cookies, they will be able to cast another vote.
Because of this you should consider responses to polls to be indicative only, and not necessarily the precise view of your visitors!