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.
- Add the Voting Widget to your campaign.
- In the Edit Widget window, click the Select a List drop-down menu, and choose a list.
- Optional: Check the Only show approved entries box (this is recommended any time you are displaying user-submitted content).
- Optional: If you won’t be using voting, check Disable Voting.
- Optional: Click Voting Setup, check Restrict Voting and use the drop-down menus to adjust how often and how many times users can vote.
- 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.
- Click Layout Options. If you want to use the Voting Widget to simply display the entries without voting, check the Hide vote count box.
- 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.