Introduction

Advanced Poll is a robust yet complete Joomla extension to help everyone create and manage polls effectively. This special Joomla component is tailor-made for Joomla 3.x. It is built to show polls in both of module position and Joomla, EasyBlog, K2, Zoo content.

Vote permission is restricted with advanced Joomla ACL, giving you the permission to allow which user group can vote easily. Along with various setting options in each poll, the component has user-friendly interface design that assist you during the configuration process.

Advanced Poll is strongly customizable and flexible. Apart from 8 gorgeous themes, there are tons of options to support you in changing colors or text of poll elements. Especially, the component enables you to add Captcha and set multiple security layers for each poll.

Advanced Poll stays focused on data analysis and archives. The line, map and text statistics on dashboard highlight most noticeable parts while the poll log records detailed information of votes and voters.

Features

• Compatibility: Advanced Poll works well on Joomla 3.x and later versions.
• Joomla ACL: The component is compatible with Joomla ACL. You have permission to allow which user group can vote. For example, if you want ‘Registered’ users to have vote permission, just change ‘Vote a Poll' permission to 'Allowed'.
• Categories: Advanced Poll supports unlimited categories and subcategories.
• Security Layers: You can add many security layers (Cookie, IP Address or User) to a poll. You can also set the time lag (Hour, Day, Week, Month, Year) to prevent consecutive votes.
• Effective Process: Advanced Poll shows result after voting. You can vote and view result in Inline or Popup style without refreshing the page.
• Multiple Result Graphs: There are 8 different graphs to display the result. They are Scaling Line, Relative Line and Pie, Doughnut, Polar, Line, Bar, Radar Chart.
• Poll Answers: You are allowed to add unlimited answers to a poll as well as set color and edit vote count of each answer. You can also split answers in 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns.
• ‘Other’ Answer: Advanced Poll supports “Other” answer and option to set max choices.
• Poll Description: If question and answers are not enough to illustrate your ideas, just use description to add text/image before or after question.
• Captcha - ReCaptcha: Advanced Poll supports Captcha Version 1.0 and 2.0 to prevent annoying spammers. Using Captcha 2.0 allows users to attest they are not robots with just a single click.
• Various Theme Options: Regardless of 8 gorgeous basic themes, Advanced Poll amazes users by numerous options to configure wrapper, header, body, footer and graph style. Custom CSS is still supported, of course.
• Useful Module: The Advanced Poll module let users choose to show only one poll or random polls from a certain category. Adding multiple poll modules to one Joomla page is totally possible.
• Data Analysis: On the back-end dashboard of Advanced Poll, you can see a line graph of votes counted daily and a map shows votes sorted by countries.
• Data Logs: Votes will be recorded with full information of poll title, username, IP address, country and date. Poll and time filters help to track votes more easily.
• Joomla/K2/Zoo/EasyBlog Content Support: Special plugins allows you to add polls to Joomla articles or EasyBlog/K2/Zoo items.

Click here to see demo.

Installation

Download the latest version of Advanced Portfolio from ExtStore website.

There are 2 ways to install Advanced Poll. You can upload the extension or install from a directory.

a. Upload the extension

• Download the extension to your local machine. The extension should be a zip file package.
• From the backend of your Joomla site (administration) select Extensions > Extension Manager.
  
  
• On the next page, click the Browse button and select the extension package on your local machine.
  

b. From a directory

• Unzip all of the files locally.
• Transfer the files (using FTP) to a folder in the install directory (for example administrator/components/com_installer/components) for the type of extension you are installing.
• Use the installer, but select "install from directory" indicating the correct folder name. This folder name should be an absolute path from the root of the filesystem.

Dashboard view

• At the Administrator site, choose Components → Advanced Poll

• Dashboard of Advanced Poll shows the quick icons to Categories, Polls and Log/Statistics sections. Here you can see summerizing information as well as line/map statistics of votes. Log/Statistics section is used to track information of voters.

Create new category

• Click on Categories icon on dashboard and button to create new category. If there is no category created, you cannot add new polls.
• The Title of category is required.

• Title: The name of the category. This is strictly requested by default.
• Alias: Alias of category title is editable.
• Description: Enter an optional category description in the text-area.
• Parent: Choose one parent category from existing categories or No parent.
• Status: Choose Published status for the category.
• Access: Choose public (for user and guest), registered (for user only) or other user groups.

Create new poll

Click on Polls icon on dashboard and button to create a new poll.

Edit poll

• Title of poll is required.
• Alias: The alias of poll's name.
• Category: Choose a category to contain this poll.
• Description: This field allows you to add images/text to poll.

Publishing Settings

• Publishing options are used to set publishing date and expired date of a poll.
• Start Publishing: Set an optional date to start publishing the poll.
• Finish Publishing: Set an optional date to end publishing the poll.
• Created Date: Add date information to the poll.

Answer Settings

You can add as many answers to a poll as you want. You are also allowed to edit vote count and color of each answer. These answer colors have direct effects on colors of Pie, Doughnut and Polar Chart elements. The tick icon in each answer is used to publish/unpublish that answer. The gear icon means that the answer is created by admin while the person icon means that the answer is created by voters (when they choose 'Other' option).

You can enable/ disable the answer to show on the poll by clicking tick icon

When clicking every answer, you will see the full editor where you are free to use images and html tags.

Poll Options

• Max Choices: Choose the maximum number of answers that voters can select.
• Security Layers: You can add multiple security layers (Cookie, IP Address or User) to one poll.
• Captcha: This option allows you to show or not show Captcha in one poll.
• Allow Voting Again: Voters can vote again after an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year or cannot vote again.
• Show Description: You can /hide description or show it before/after the question.
• Display Answers: Answers can be arranged in 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns.
• Button Text: You can change text of Vote, Results and Back buttons.
• Other Anwer: If you selected Yes, visitors could add their own answers in Other box. Text of 'Other' option can be changed as well.
• Show Other Answer: Option to show/hide the Other answers of voters in the result window.
• Show Result: Set poll to always/never show result or only show result after being voted.
• Result Display: This option shows the Result Screen on the same page or on a popup window.
• Result Graph: There are 8 types of result graphs, including Scaling Line, Relative Line and Pie, Doughnut, Polar, Line, Bar, Radar Chart.
• Show Votes: Show number of votes in the result view.

Theme Customization

Theme options in Advanced Poll Configuration are considered Global Settings while Theme Options in each poll is used for a specific poll. There are 8 gorgeous themes to choose. Based on these basic themes, you change the following options to create your own theme. If all the options are not enough, you can use Custom CSS field to add more style to the poll.

Wrapper Style

• Border Color of Poll: Set the color of poll's border.
• Background Color: Change the Result's background.
• Background Image: Make image background of the poll.
• Image Repeat: These options repeat the image in the background.
• Image Alignment: There are 9 positions to align the image.

Header/Body Style

• Question Background: Background color of the question.
• Description Color: Text color of the question.
• Description Background: Background color of the poll description.
• Description Color: Text color of the poll description.
• Answers Wrapper Background: Background color of the whole answer panel.
• Answer Background: Background color that wraps around the answers. This option is left blank by default to have the same color with Answers Wrapper Background.
• Answer Color: Text color of answers.

Footer Style

• Footer Background Color: Background color of poll's footer.
• Footer Text Color: Text color of poll's footer.
• Vote Button Background: Background color of the vote button.
• Vote Button Color: Text color of the vote button.
• Vote Button Hover Background: Background color of the vote button on mouseover.
• Vote Button Hover Color: Text color of the vote button on mouseover.
• Results Button Background: Background color of the result button.
• Results Button Color: Text color of the result button.
• Results Button Hover BG: Background color of the result button on mouseover.
• Results Button Hover Color: Text color of the result button on mouseover.
• All colors of the Back Button on the Result screen copy precisely colors of the Vote Button.

Graph Style

• Line Color: Color of the line graph of the Scaling and Relative Line.
• Line Background Color: Background color of the line graph of the Scaling and Relative Line.
• Fill Color: Color of filled part of Line, Bar and Radar Chart.
• Stroke Color: Border line color of Line, Bar and Radar Chart.
• Hightlight Fill Color: Hover color of filled part of Bar Chart.
• Highlight Stroke Color: Hover border line color of Bar Chart.
• Point Color: Point color of Line and Radar Chart.
• Angle Line Color: Axis color of Radar Chart.
• Scale Line Color: This option allows you to change the scale line color of Polar and Radar Chart as well as x/y-axis color of Line and Bar Chart.
• Scale Grid Line Color: Grid line color of Line and Bar Chart.
• Scale Font Color: Font color of figures on Polar, Line and Bar Chart.

Configuration

• All the options in General and Theme sections are the same as options in each poll but they are considered default options and used when you want to apply the general style to all polls.

• 
• You should notice the setting of Vote a Poll and See Result. If you choose Allowed, users in the selected groups can vote and see the poll result. If you choose Denied, users in the group need to register to have the vote permission and don’t have the permission to see the poll result.

Module Display

• From Administrator site, choose Extensions → Module Manager, search for Advanced Poll. Click in to enable and edit.

• Source: Show one specified poll or show random polls from certain categories.
  • Specified Poll: Using this option, you have to choose a poll from created polls to show in the module.
  • Categories: Using this option, you need to select categories that you want to show. Poll Order option allows you to choose the Latest or one Random poll from categories.
• View Result: You can set result to be viewed by default.
• You should not forget to set the module position and publish the poll module as well.

• Module Assignment: Choose to assign module in selected pages.
• Menu Selection: Select menu type.

Create Poll in Contents

Click Extensions → Plugin Manager, search for Advanced Poll plugins. You need to enable them.

• After enable Advanced Poll plugins, an Adv Poll button will appear at the end of all contents of Joomla, K2 and Zoo.

• Click anywhere in your article to choose the poll's position. Then click the button to choose one poll to display. After that, one syntax will be taken to the position in article automatically.
• You can change the title, width and alignment of this new born poll.

Captcha Usage

Click Extensions → Plugin Manager, search for Captcha - ReCaptcha plugin. First of all, you need to enable this plugin.

Plugin Settings

• Version: Choose Captcha version you want to use. Version 2.0 is the recommended version.
• Site key and Secret key are strongly required.
• Theme: Choose the Light or Dark theme for the Captcha.

How to get Captcha Keys

• Go to http://www.google.com/recaptcha
• Click Get reCAPTCHA button on the right top corner of the page.

• Fill in all fields, especially Domains. E.g: extstore.com

Other Settings

• Captcha option appears in Advanced Poll Configuration and each poll so that using Captcha in one or all polls is all up to you.

Support

If you have questions regarding specific details or need any help with the product, feel free to contact us or join Extstore forum.

FAQs

0 Invalid Controller: name='poll', format="error in Advaced Poll

This error happens due to one of the following reason

• jQuery option in your modules
• Your template may use old Bootstrap version
• Your Joomla 2.5 site doesn't load Mootools

Can more than one poll be placed on a page or within an article?

Yes, You can add multiple polls into one article or multilple modules (with polls) to one article 

Can Voter add their own answers in Advanced Poll?

Yes, voters can add their own answer in "Other" answer of Advanced Poll. You can set these "Other Answers" to be published or not.

Does your Poll component support Jquery or Mootool?

Poll for Joomla 2.5 uses Mootools, for Joomla 3.x uses jQuery. 

I got banks page when I publish Advanced Poll module.

This error happens when you didn't choose Poll for Advanced Poll module. 

I want to my users to be able to vote without registration.

You should check and set vote permission for Public user group. 

Is it possible that the results are not showing up in a popup?

Yes, it is totally possible, every poll has an option to show the result nomally or on popup.

Vote button doesn't show?

To allow a group to vote, just choose Allowed for Vote a Poll option in Advanced Poll Configuration => Permission

Eg: You want to Public group can vote, click on Public and select Allowed for Vote a Poll option 

Poll Result Doesn't Show

Firstly, make sure that you chose Always or After Voting for Show Results button. 

And then, to allow a user group to have the permission to see the poll result, just choose Allowed for See Results button in Advanced Poll Configuration => Permission.