This page researched and written by Tom Irish, owner, webkewl design
Polls can be a very useful tool not only for attracting traffic to your site but also to gauge the opinions of your guests. As Mac users, I know most of us are very familiar with polls. It seems all that a website has to do is create a poll involving Macs and as soon as word of it hits the net, the site running the poll is inundated with hits as we rush to defend our platform choice. You can be sure that Mac users are not the only ones flocking to polls. According to one source, the most popular polling questions involve President Clinton and whether or not he should be staying in office until the end of his term. To look at the various sites that offer polls one would think that the most popular question is "What came first, the chicken or the egg?". (The chicken was winning in all of the polls I saw, by roughly 2 to 1) :-)
Below you will find a variety of polls with some remarks about each. One of these I have configured for a poll I did of people with an interest in internet content creation tools where I asked, what is you favorite: Dreamweaver or GoLive? You can see this poll in action here. The link will take you off-site in a new window. When you are finished viewing the poll, simply close the window and this page should still be waiting for you.
The following polls are all free.
| BeSeen Quizlet | This remote hosted poll is simple to configure and I like the look. Membership is required. Terms of service include privacy information - something I make it a point to look for when a site asks for personal information. |
| freepolls.com | Vantage Net hosts this polling service that allows up to 8 different responses. Membership is required and privacy information is readily available in the terms of use. This service allows you the option to pay for the service so that results may be returned without advertising. |
| Insta-Poll | Insta-Poll is another remote hosted service which requires membership however this one scared me off at first! The registration required considerable personal information and no mention was made of privacy in the terms and conditions. An email inquiry into the issue was promptly replied to and I was assured that any information given would be kept private. Impressive! |
| RobPoll | Among the polling scripts listed at the CGI Resource Index, this one got the most comments and highest rating. Can be run with or without SSI (Server Side Includes), includes administrator functions for changing the poll, supports unlimited questions, and can prevent multiple votes by either IP or cookie tracking. |
| Polling On The Fly | This is the poll I configured in the example mentioned above. Allows for use of .htaccess for user authentication and vote control. Can also track browser stats. There are two versions of the script: a radio button style poll and a text based poll. Users can also make comments on the radio poll which you can determine whether or not to display. The author requires permission for commercial purposes. |
I really can't recommend one of these polls more than the other. All seem to
function as advertised and which you choose is dependent on what you are looking
for in terms of look and feel, and whether it matters to you that the remote
hosted polls return banners along with the results or not. Either way, polls
are a great way to increase traffic and learn more about the views of people
that visit your site!
