This guide covers our old ProBoards v4 software. Click here for the ProBoards v5 Help Guide.
Conducting polls can be fun and useful for surveying a forum community's opinion about different subjects. If forum administrators have assigned the appropriate privileges, new poll buttons will display to members in the header and footer bars of the thread listing page within a board, next to the New Thread button.
Clicking the new poll button will take you to a modified version of the general posting page where you can create a new poll question, create poll responses and, choose among several other options to customize your new poll. Components of the forum polling feature are explained below:
Subject: This will be the subject line of the new thread the poll is attached to. The subject will display on the board's thread-listing page after the poll is created. The subject can be up to 50 characters in length, and should reflect the topic of the attached poll.
Poll Question: The Poll Question will appear above the poll responses when the new thread is posted. This will allow members to quickly see what they are voting for.
Answer 1: 2: 3: These boxes are where you'll add the responses members will cast their votes for once the poll is posted. You'll need a minimum of 2 but can have up to 35 different responses for members to choose from. To add additional responses, click the link labeled Click to display more answer fields to have all 35 fields display on the page.
Number of Selections: This controls the number of different responses members can vote for in a single message board poll.
Poll Expiration: Allows you to set a time when you'd like the poll to expire. Members won't be able to cast votes after the poll expires. If you keep this set at 0, the poll will never expire.
Results Display: Allows you to control how online forum poll results are displayed. The drop-down menu offers the following options:
always be shown: Results will continuously display whether or not the member has voted.
be shown after voting: Members will see poll results only after they've cast their votes.
be shown after the poll is locked: Results won't display until the vote expires or is locked.
Vote Retraction: Checking this box allows members to change their votes up until the poll is locked or expires.
Once your poll is configured, with a note explaining its purpose, click the Preview button at the bottom of the page to review it, or click Post Message to create the new thread. When you visit the board containing the thread, you'll see an icon to the left of the title of the thread indicating the topic contains a poll.
Members vote in the poll by selecting a button to the left of the response they'd like to vote for. When they click Submit Vote, the page will reload to update the vote count and results.
You can also click the lock poll button if you want to stop forum members from voting or, click view poll voters to see which members have voted in your poll. Note: while you can see which members voted, you won't be able to see what they voted for individually.