Survey Lite

U S E R ' S    M A N U A L

How It Works

You design your surveys using the control panel. Then you generate the HTML code for the survey, copy the code, and paste the code into your web page. If you decide to edit your survey, simply generate it again.

The survey's "thank you" page may contain the cumulative results for the survey, or not, whichever you choose. Cumulative results formatting (font face, size, and color, and also the the graphical bar color and maximum length) can be changed at any time through your control panel.

Your control panel gives you access to a plain text detailed use database for each of your surveys and the ability to edit them. For files importable into Excel, Access, and other desktop spreadsheet and database programs, you can create tab- (*.txt) and comma-delimited (*.csv) databases from the detailed use databases.

Getting Started

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Program Configuration

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Here, verify that the http://... URL to your SurveyLite.cgi script is correct. Survey Lite will use this URL when generating your survey forms.

Next, verify that the server location of your sendmail or qmail is correct. If sendmail, ensure it has the -t flag. Survey Lite requires this when sending you email with notification that a survey has been taken (this is an option for the surveys you create).

To send you the notification emails, Survey Lite needs to know what email address to send them to. Verify the email address is correct.

Optionally, you can specify the email address for the "From:" header lines of the emails Survey Lite sends out. Using on or more [[_____]] placeholders (where _____ represents a form field name) can be used to represent live information. The placeholder(s) will be replaced with the values the user provide in the form fields.

For example, if form field name="x_email" and name="x_name" were filled in, and the following was specified as the From: email address:

"[[x_name]]" <[[x_email]]>

and the information provided on the form was, respectively, me@example.com and "Willie Wonka," then the actual From: header line of the outgoing email will be

From: "Willie Wonka" <me@example.com>

Specifying the "Subject:" line is optional also. Using [[SurveyName]] in the subject line specification will cause Survey Lite to insert the survey's name.

Creating a Survey

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1. The first page will ask you for a name for your survey, whether or not you're using cookies to restrict multiple use of the survey, and whether or not you want to receive an email notification when the survey is used.

2. Following that, you'll have a page where you specify the first survey question and all of its answer choices. You also specify whether or not an answer is required.

   If you want to let the user type something rather than (or in addition to) selecting answers, you can use a blank field for a one-line answer or a text box field for a multi-line answer.

   ~		For a field where the user can type in a one-line answer, type: --BLANK,22-- (Replace the 22 with the number of characters long you want the field to be.) For example, if your question was, "What is your favorite color?" and you specified your answer choices as: Red Green --BLANK,15-- Then, if you chose radio buttons for the answer selection method and generated the survey, that question would appear something like this: What is your favorite color? Red Green
   ~		For field where the user can type in a multi-line answer, type: --TEXTAREA,r4,c20-- (Replace the 4 with the number of rows for the box height. Replace the 20 with the number of characters for the box width.) For example, if your question was, "Why did you choose that color?" and you specified only one answer choice, as: --TEXTAREA,r4,c17-- Then, when you generated the survey, that question would appear something like this: Why did you choose that color?

3. If you specified more than one answer choice, you will now have a page where you decide how the survey user will select the answer(s). Your choices are radio buttons or dropdown list when only one answer may be selected, and checkboxes or listbox when the user may select more than one answer. You may also specify default answers.

Now, you've specified the first question and the specifics about its answer choices. The next page allows you to edit the question, delete the question, or to specify another question for your survey. If you specify another question, you'll be able to specify choices just like when you created your first question.

When all of your survey questions have been created, click the "Back to 'Main Menu'" button near the top of the control panel page.

Generating a Survey

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When you generate the HTML code for a survey form, you can specify the font face, size, and color. You can also specify the "thankyou" page, the page the user will see after they complete the survey, and the text on the survey form's submit button.

If you want the cumulative survey results to display in the "thankyou" page, put either
[[SURVEY_RESULTS]]
or
<!--SURVEY_RESULTS-->
in the page's HTML source code at the place where you want the results to be printed.

Note that you do not need to display cumulative results for your user.

If you wish, you may allow your user to see cumulative results without taking the survey. For the latter, use the URL presented in the second paragraph of the note on the control panel's survey generation page.

After you click the button that generates the HTML code, just copy the code and paste it into your web page.

Customizing Survey Forms

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Customizing the design.

The Formatting Survey Results page, like the survey generation page, provides the URL that can be used in links allowing site visitors to see cumulative survey results without first taking the survey.

Adding custom form fields.

When you add custom form fields to the survey, the form field names should begin with the 2-characters sequence: x_

When survey users answer your custom form fields, the answers will be recorded in the Detailed Use Database. If you elect to be notified every time the survey is used, the answers to your custom form fields will also be emailed to you.

For example, you might want to allow users to elect to subscribe to your ezine. The custom HTML code you add to the form might look something like this:

To subscribe to "Only the Best,"<br>
type your email address here:<br>
<input type="text" name="x_email" size="22"><br>
<input type="radio" name="x_format" value="T" CHECKED>Text 
<input type="radio" name="x_format" value="H">HTML

which would appear like this:

Formatting Survey Results

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The Formatting Survey Results control panel page, like the survey generation page, provides the URL that can be used in links allowing site visitors to see cumulative survey results without first taking the survey.

If you so not use CSS in your pages, you can specify the font face, size, and color for the cumulative results displays. If you use CSS, use the following style names:

On the Formatting Survey Results control panel page, you must do one or more of the following:

1. Check the box to display the numbers representing the number of times each answer choice was chosen.
2. Check the box to display the percentage that each answer choice was chosen compared to the others.
3. Specify the color of the graphical bar representing the number of times each answer choice was chosen. If you specify a color (which tells Survey Lite to create the graphical bar) then you must also specify the maximum length of the bar.

When you click the submit button at the bottom of this control panel page, all subsequent cumulative results pages will have the new formatting.

The formatting can be changed at any time.

Display Results from Many Surveys On One Page

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As you now understand, Survey Lite can generate a custom acknowledgement/results page whenever a survey is taken.

As of version 2.5, you can specify the URL of an alternate web page. Use the hidden field name="redirect"

Optionally, the alternate web page can have HTML iframe tags with the results of any number of surveys, including the one just taken. To dispaly survey results in an iframe, specify the normal results URL as the iframe's src value. The normal results URL would be something like

http://example.com/cgi-bin/SurveyLite.cgi?display=xxx

Here is an example iframe tag.

<iframe 
   src="http://example.com/cgi-bin/SurveyLite.cgi?display=xxx" 
   width="600" 
   height="150" 
   frameborder="0" 
   marginheight="0" 
   marginwidth="0" 
   scrolling="no">
</iframe>

Create a similar iframe tag for each survey results to be displayed. Here is a good iframe reference page.

Detailed Use Database

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Survey Lite maintains a plain text database with details about each time a survey is taken. This database can be downloaded with FTP (download as plain text, not as binary), viewed with the control panel, edited with the control panel, and all or part of the database can be deleted.

You can also generate tab- or comma-delimited databases from the detailed use database. Such databases are the format expected by many desktop spreadsheet and database programs when importing data.

Other Control Panel Functions

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Other functions you can accomplish with the control panel:

1. Edit a survey. The process of editing is similar to creating, except some or all of the form fields are pre-filled in for you. When you've edited a survey, generate the HTML code and paste it into your web page.
2. Edit a survey's cookie setting.
3. Clear/Zero cumulative survey results. This will set all counts back to zero. (This does not effect the Detailed Use Database.)
4. You can also delete surveys. When you delete a survey, all of the survey's databases are deleted.

Technical Support

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Technical support is available at the WillMaster forum:
http://www.willmaster.com/support/forum/

If you like, we can install Survey Lite for you, custom installation information can be found at http://www.willmaster.com/software/information/installation.php

Thank you for your pu

Thank you for your purchase of Survey Lite.

Copyright 2001 William Bontrager