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#1 2020-03-10 01:26:35

aslsw66
Member
From: Canberra, Australia
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 342
Website

Basic survey tool

I need a pretty simply survey tool to get feedback from members of our volunteer fire brigade.

It doesn’t have to be huge – we only have 40 members, I don’t need beautiful graphical results or for the results to be shown to members. Possibly setting a cookie to prevent multiple submissions might be good but given the small numbers it’s not essential.

Is mem_form still usable with the latest versions of Textpattern? Or are there better options with third-party scripts? I can’t find any relatively new Textpattern plugins (say with activity in the last 5 years).

Thanks everyone.

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#2 2020-03-10 09:32:29

colak
Admin
From: Cyprus
Registered: 2004-11-20
Posts: 9,007
Website GitHub Mastodon Twitter

Re: Basic survey tool

I know it is not at all politically correct but google has this tool, alternatively, there is this open source one.


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#3 2020-03-10 10:10:47

jakob
Admin
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-01-20
Posts: 4,578
Website

Re: Basic survey tool

I don’t think mem_form does work on newer txp installations, though it is something that I need to look at for one of my sites. I wondered whether it can now be replaced with a callback plugin for com_connect but I haven’t investigated that.

There are plenty of online tools for one-off forms and surveys. If you are looking for something you can use regularly, and don’t mind forking out something for it, I’ve used machform a couple of times and embedded the forms in Textpattern articles. It’s proved excellent for things like course or conference sign-ups. It exists as a cloud service, but I’ve used it as a self-hosted version on the same host assigned to an extra subdomain. You can export individual records as PDFs or the results straight to an excel file.

If you wanted to analyse the data results in textpattern, and your databases are on the same host, you could theoretically use a combination of rah_swap and smd_query to execute targeted queries to the machform database from within textpattern.

For European users, after some nagging of the developer, it now has some GDPR handling options in it like auto-delete after a certain period, or retaining consent fields that you need to keep.

It will handle payments but I’ve never tried that. It is quite flexible in its form design but more complex pricing structures (e.g. prices matrices) with conditional fields (e.g. if a discounted member, then discount another field too) are not its forte. Mind you, that was not really possible with mem_form either.


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#4 2020-03-10 14:43:43

gaekwad
Server grease monkey
From: People's Republic of Cornwall
Registered: 2005-11-19
Posts: 4,134
GitHub

Re: Basic survey tool

aslsw66 wrote #322126:

I need a pretty simply survey tool to get feedback from members of our volunteer fire brigade.

For your audience, try Wufoo – you should fit the free tier.

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#5 2020-03-10 20:19:33

jakob
Admin
From: Germany
Registered: 2005-01-20
Posts: 4,578
Website

Re: Basic survey tool

gaekwad wrote #322138:

For your audience, try Wufoo – you should fit the free tier.

Good tip. I was trying to remember what that was called. Machform arose as a bit of a knock-off of that in its early days.


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#6 2020-03-10 21:34:28

mistersugar
Member
From: North Carolina
Registered: 2004-04-13
Posts: 141
Website

Re: Basic survey tool

I’ve used Wufoo for many years, and it’s very good.

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#7 2020-03-10 23:05:58

aslsw66
Member
From: Canberra, Australia
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 342
Website

Re: Basic survey tool

gaekwad wrote #322138:

For your audience, try Wufoo – you should fit the free tier.

Thanks for this suggestions. I found the free tier on other options would have been just a little bit too limiting, but this looks perfect.

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#8 2020-03-10 23:06:35

aslsw66
Member
From: Canberra, Australia
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 342
Website

Re: Basic survey tool

colak wrote #322131:

I know it is not at all politically correct but google has this tool, alternatively, there is this open source one.

I don’t have a problem with the Google product if it works! This looks good as an option.

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#9 2020-03-10 23:08:02

aslsw66
Member
From: Canberra, Australia
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 342
Website

Re: Basic survey tool

jakob wrote #322133:

I don’t think mem_form does work on newer txp installations, though it is something that I need to look at for one of my sites. I wondered whether it can now be replaced with a callback plugin for com_connect but I haven’t investigated that.

That’s a pity. In earlier days I like the ability to post directly to tables! I’m currently thinking about resurrecting my interest in Textpattern and need to clear the plugins out of my current installation.

Last edited by aslsw66 (2020-03-10 23:08:21)

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#10 2020-03-11 00:12:10

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,250
Website GitHub

Re: Basic survey tool

Can’t think of a reason why mem_form wouldn’t work. Might need a spruce up in code modernisation for later PHP versions.

Now, mem_simple_form to post to tables will likely need updating to fix any NULLDATETIME issues and recognise any DB table changes of late, but again, it should then work fine on 4.8.

Last edited by Bloke (2020-03-11 00:13:35)


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