New community polls are back online

Sorry about that!  Yes, most polls created on the site are kept private by their authors but still, the community polls section has deserved some love for a while now and I just gave it some.

Don't forget that if you want your poll to be shown on the Community page you should create a free account before posting it.

Every Poll Answered

After releasing the “Trivia answer” feature a few weeks ago some highly opinionated users brought to our attention the fact that limiting the feature to the Trivia category was ... ahh ... limiting.  We agreed.  And so now you can add an “after vote” message to every poll you create regardless of category and it’ll be shown once a voter votes.

The message can be an answer, a thank you note or further instructions, it’s entirely up to you as long as it’s not longer that 300 characters.

We also re-imagined the poll statistics and made them self-contained. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Quikipoll and Trivia are now BFFs

Now while creating a poll if you set the poll category to Trivia, a new trivia answer field appears where you can write down the correct answer. Then when someone votes on the poll the answer is displayed as part of the poll results.

So now Quikipoll is a great platform for creating and distributing Trivia questions! And what is the difference between a trivia question and a Quiz?  Nothing much. (hint, hint)

New Embeddable Polls

You can now embed polls right on websites and blogs (like this one).

Here is a live poll currently shown in community polls and our home page.

You can select your choices and vote right on the poll. Go ahead, take a chance and cast your vote!

I also updated the poll viewer to make it faster and to make all poll sharing and invite options easier to find. 

One of the drawbacks of iframes (the technology behind the embedded poll above) is that you can’t use them in emails. If you use iframes in email, most spam filters out there will junk it. Not a good idea.

Our email sharing options can already create beautiful emails for you with embedded polls (not using iframes) that don’t get blacklisted, but what if you are using a commercial email marketing company or host your own mail server and want to add a poll to your campaigns? The solution now is to add a URL link to your poll that is associated with an image or text selection clients can click on and visit. This works, but I think I have a better solution I want to try implementing as a challenge. If it works it should be pretty neat.

Stay tuned and in the meantime embed some Quikipolls on your websites and blogs!

Added poll categories

I've been wanting to add a topic category setting to polls for a while now.  I know most of you are keeping your polls private and outside the Community Polls page, but I'm anticipating (hoping) that over time it will become more popular. Even now, poll content varies so much that it can be daunting to find polls of interest without scrolling endlessly or searching for keywords until you find something you care about. Not any more.

The Community Polls page now has a new icon button and floating menu (to the right of the search box) that lets you select from a list of categories. Click on a category and see the results right away. Active topic filters are indicated on the page and can be cleared right there.

While I was working on this, I decided it was time to change the default display setting to show all polls by default - including those you’ve already voted on. Since new polls are added on top as older ones slide to the bottom anyways, it actually makes more sense to do it this way.

But what if you only want to see polls you haven't voted on yet? Cleverly, I solved this by adding a virtual category called (wait for it): Not Voted. Click on this category and the only polls shown are those you haven't voted on. Voilá!

This feature is live now.

Next I'm going to tackle the embeddable poll issue. Right now you can post a link to your polls and if you send voting invitations through our servers emails shows a nice embedded poll but how about blogs and websites or emails sent through third parties? Solutions coming soon.

Finished the new home page today.

Now instead of visiting the Community Page by default and trying to figure out what's going on by yourself we’ll have an opportunity to explain the service a bit before letting you loose.

I think it looks great (hope you agree).

Proper home page in the works

Currently working on a proper home page that will explain what Quikipoll is all about instead of landing on the Community Polls page. Should be done in a few days. Just waiting for the muse to do its thing.

You can edit your polls now

We just pushed the poll editor feature online. You can now edit anything in the poll even type and status. Of course once a poll has received votes or been repolled it can no longer be edited.

Happy Polling!

Easier private polls

We've noticed lots of users are keeping their polls private and not releasing them to the "Community" stream. As a result we've added an option to create polls in "paused" state. This way you can see the poll and edit it without risking stray votes. It also makes it easier to Repoll your own polls for internal use. This was not a problem early on but is becoming more of a issue as visitor traffic increases.

We continue to refine Quikipoll's usability in preparation for launch. One of the limitations we've had is that once a poll is created there is no way to edit it short of deleting it and creating it again. I'm happy to report this is being addressed and will be deployed shortly. Everything will be editable quickly and easily.

What is it?

Quikipoll is a free online polling platform. It makes it easy for you to create polls suitable for sharing with family, friends, co-workers, customers and more. Easily compare group vote results with those of the quikipoll.com community. The differences can be revealing and fun.

No arguments, discussions or criticism: just answers to any question ever.

Simple.