How to Set Up Voting

The Voting Widget displays entries received in a ShortStack form, and allows visitors to your campaign to vote on the entries. The Voting Widget is not necessary if you are choosing a winner randomly. However, if you are running a voting competition, or if you want to display the entries on your campaign, even without voting enabled, you need to add the Voting Widget.

NOTE: No voting restriction method is completely fraud-proof. If you're using a less-intense method of restriction (i.e. Anonymous Fingerprint, Facebook Login) we suggest using voting to help you choose the top few entries, then choosing a winner from those entries with a panel of judges (or just by yourself).

The following steps outline the most common ways to set up the Voting Widget. It is not a complete list of features. See the Voting Widget help doc for detailed setup instructions.

1. Add the Voting Widget to your campaign.
   
   
2. In the Edit Widget window, click the Select a List drop-down menu, and choose a list.
   
   
3. Optional: Check the Only show approved entries box (this is recommended any time you are displaying user-submitted content).
   
   
4. Optional: If you won’t be using voting, check Disable Voting.
   
   
5. Optional: Click Voting Setup, check Restrict Voting and use the drop-down menus to adjust how often and how many times users can vote.
   
   
6. Click Choose Layout and select a layout. The layout with the thumbnail on the right works best when there isn’t a photo to display.
   
   
7. Click Layout Options. If you want to use the Voting Widget to simply display the entries without voting, check the Hide vote count box.
   
   
8. Click the Save & Exit button.

Not all form fields are displayed in the Voting Widget by default. See the Form Designer article for more information.