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Voting Widget

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Justin Heeren
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Contents

Overview
Setup
Sorting
Layout
Options
Sharing

Overview

Use the Voting Widget to display entries that were submitted to ShortStack lists via a Form Widget or via our Instagram Feeds feature. 



Setup

Use the Select a List drop-down menu to choose a list.

Only show approved entries

Check the Only show approved entries box, and the Voting Widget will display only the entries you have approved. To approve entries, go to Entries/Lists, click View Entries for the database, and then check the box in the Approvals column that is beside the entry you want to approve.

Voting Round

Use the Voting Round drop-down menu to select the number of voting rounds. Leave it set to 1 unless you are setting up a contest with multiple rounds of voting. Most contests employ just one voting round. To learn more about this setting, see How to Create a Multi-Round Voting Contest and Using the Voting Widget for Non-Voting Purposes.

Disable Voting

Check the Disable Voting box to hide the vote button. When this box is checked, the Voting Widget simply displays the entries the Form Widget receives.

Enable Voting CAPTCHA

You may now enable a hidden CAPTCHA for the Voting Widget that is completely transparent to the voters. It uses Google's Re-CAPTCHA behind the scenes to decide if the voter is a bot. If it thinks they are, it will reject the vote. The rejection message can be overridden. With this option, you may adjust the sensitivity - higher is more restrictive.

For information on how Re-CAPTCHA decides who is a bot and who isn't, you can check out this page.

Note: A voter accessing the campaign in their browser's Incognito Mode will likely trigger the bot detection. 

Voting Restrictions

Use the Voting Restrictions check boxes to chose how ShortStack keeps track of voters.

  • No Restrictions: Anyone can vote as many times and for as many entries as they would like.

  • Anonymous Fingerprint: This option uses a combination of the voter's browser version and anonymized IP address. Before storing, we anonymize the information with a one-way cryptographic hash. This ensures that no part of this information can trace the vote back to a specific person or machine; this method is GDPR compliant.
  • Anonymous IP: This option is a little bit stricter than Anonymous Fingerprint, as it uses only an anonymized version of the voter's IP address without the browser data. Voters in the same network (typically in an office environment) may run into issues with voting more than once.

  • Facebook Log In: Voting restrictions are enforced by requiring users to log in with Facebook.
    • Note: With Facebook Log In restrictions enabled, ShortStack asks voters for permission to access their Facebook accounts by presenting them with the Permissions Prompt. This is required so that ShortStack can use the voter’s Facebook ID to enforce voting restrictions. ShortStack does not access, store, or distribute any of the voters’ other information. To customize the Permissions Prompt, see Customizing Your Custom Published Campaign.

  • Mobile Login: Voting restrictions are enforced by requiring users to login with a code sent to their mobile phone. Learn more.

Users can vote [frequency of voting]

Use the Users can vote drop-down menus to select how many times and how often a user can vote.

Note: Setting voting to "every 1 day" is equivalent to every 24 hours. This means a voter must wait a full 24 hours before they can vote again. Because of confusion surrounding different time zones for users and the Pages they’re interacting with, we do not have an option to vote the next calendar day.

Sorting

Sort Entries

Use the Sort Entries field to select how the widget sorts entries. The options include: Most to Least is not typically used during the voting phase because it shows the entries with the most votes at the top. However, Most to Least is great when you want to show the entries with the most votes after voting has ended.

IMPORTANT: The Randomly option can only be used when all entries fit on one page (which is influenced by the Entries per Page setting). If you select Randomly and you have more than one page of entries, sorting will revert to Newest to Oldest.

Entries per Page

Enter a number between one and 30 to choose the number of entries per page within the Voting Widget. When the number of entries exceeds the number per page, page controls appear at the bottom of the widget for navigating between the pages.

Note: If a form/database has more than 1,000 entries, ShortStack will alter the page controls to improve performance.

Layout

Choose from one of the four pre-defined layouts, the Compact, Full Size, Wide (left-aligned photos), and Wide (right-aligned photos) layouts, or choose Custom Layout to create your own. The Full Size and Wide layouts offer a Collapse Long Text option. This option cuts off long sections of text at the specified height, allowing users to click to see the full text. You can specify a pixel height in the Max Text Height box. The default height is 150px when this option is selected.

If you create your own Custom Layout, it is recommended to fine-tune the layout with CSS. You can also use CSS to override any of the pre-defined layouts.

Note: If you want a more uniform-looking looking Voting Widget, you may be looking for recommended dimensions for the images people submit. Lucky you, we have a guide that has all that information! Head on over to the Image Size Guide to see our suggestions.

Options

Hide vote count

Check the Hide vote count box to hide the number of votes each entry has. This feature is especially useful when using the Voting Widget for non-voting purposes.

Open images in new window when clicked

When a user clicks on a thumbnail or medium-sized photo, the large version of the image opens in a popup window. This popup is restricted because it is not a separate browser window, but part of the IFrame that’s displaying the campaign. Check the Open images in new window when clicked box to open images in a new browser window.

Preserve whitespace in TextArea fields

Check the Preserve whitespace in TextArea fields box to preserve any line breaks and extra spaces users enter into the Photo Description field or any custom TextArea field. If you uncheck this box, user-submitted text will collapse into a single paragraph.

Hide other field labels

If you check a custom field’s box in the Form Designer to display the field in the Voting Widget, ShortStack also displays the field’s label. Check the Hide custom field labels box to hide custom field labels.

Options for ‘Facebook ID’ Field

The Facebook ID Field collects entrants’ profile pictures along with their unique Facebook User ID numbers. By default, those profile pictures will appear to the left of the Name field in the Voting Widget. Check the Hide profile pic box to remove the pictures.

Check the Hide View All, Mine and Friends buttons box if you don’t want these buttons to be available to your visitors.

Options for ‘Name’ Field

By default, anything entered into the Name field in a Form is displayed next to the entry in the Voting Widget. Use the name drop-down menus to choose how - or if - ShortStack displays an entrant’s name.

Sharing

To enable sharing, use the drop-down menu to select a Share Widget to connect to the Voting Widget. This will place a Share button next to each entry in the Voting Widget, giving entrants a chance to share their own individual entries, instead of the contest or campaign. However, the only fields that accompany the Share are the Photo, Photo Title, and Photo Description fields. If these fields are absent from your form, the values you entered in the Share menu of the Campaign Settings accompany the Share.

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