Entry Display Widget

This feature available on All Plans (except where noted)

 

Overview

Use the Entry Display Widget to display entries that were submitted to your ShortStack lists via a Form Container Widget or via our Instagram Feeds feature. You can also enable voting on those entries, for voting contests.

To add one of these widgets to your campaign, click the Entry Display Widget icon in the Add Widgets Panel, or click and drag the icon into your preview area.

Widget Settings

The widget settings popup is where you'll make any needed changes to your Entry Display Widget. To change the widget name, click on the pencil icon in the top-left (next to the name) then type your new name.

You will also see the CSS ID (starting with a #) of your new widget listed in the top-right corner of the popup.

You'll want to move through each item in the menu on the left side to make sure you've completely customized the Entry Display Widget (and what you're displaying) in the way you'd like. You can navigate through these sections using the Back and Next buttons at the bottom.

When you're finished making changes to your widget, click the blue Save and Exit button.

 

List Display

In the List Display section, select the list that has the entries that you're wishing to display. To select a list, click on the link after Connect to Existing Source.

Then, select your list from the popup.

To create a new list, click on Create New Entry Source.

In the popup, enter a name, the number of test entries to add to the new list, and any needed tags. Then click the Create and Continue to Form Designer button to continue creating your form, which will be what feeds entries to your new list.

More information on building forms is available in the Form Container help doc.

 

Display Options

To arrange the order in which your entries are shown, use the settings in the Display Options section. To start, use the Sort entries from link to arrange your entries from newest to oldest, least to most votes, or most to least votes.

You can use the Entries per page field to set how many entries are shown before the widget starts adding additional pages. The maximum is 30 entries per page.

Note: If you need to display more than 30 entries per page, reach out to our support team for assistance.

By default; if someone clicks on an entry shared to social media, they will be taken to your campaign with the share appearing in a pop-up. To disable this, check the box in the Advanced Options section.

 

Filtering

The Filtering section provides 4 different areas in which you can filter entries that are displayed in the Widget. To enable any of the filter options simply check the box next to the item.

1. Hide unapproved entries - Check this if you do not want to display any entries that have not been verified by you or your team. 
   
   
2. Filter by votes/points - Check this if you wish to only show entries with the top votes. Once enabled, the Voting Round settings will appear. Select which round you are in and how many top entries you wish to display. 
   
   
3. Filter by category - Check this if you wish to show only entries based on their category.
   
   Note: If you leave the category field blank, you can use an Action Widget to display specific categories when commanded. If you select a category in the field, you can not change the category with an Action Widget. 
   
   
4. Filter by label - Check this if you wish to filter via a specific label you assigned the entries. This can be used to easily showcase the winners. 

 

Advanced

You can disable pop-up showing reffered/shared entry. By checking the box, the shared entry will no longer show as pop-up when someone clicks on the entry URL. 

 

Voting

If you're looking to let the public vote on your entries, you can set that up in the Voting section. Check the box to Enable Voting.

Once enabled, you will see Show total votes received at the top. Click this text to change to percentage of total votes or to hide vote count. 

For multi-round voting contests, you have the option here to switch between voting rounds.

Determine how many entries are shown in each round using the Filtering section.

You can schedule when you want voting to start and end using the Start/Stop voting on specific dates section. Simply use the fields to set a Start and End date, and here you also have quick access to alter the campaign's Time Zone. To alleviate any confusion, you'd generally want the time zone set to the geographical location of your entrants.

 

Voting Restrictions

Note: This section will only be visible if voting is enabled.

ShortStack gives you a few different tools for enforcing voting rules in your campaign in the Restriction section. Use the Restrict votes by link to choose between our four different restriction methods:

• 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.
  
  
• Email address: (Available on Pro Plan or higher) Selecting this allows you to restrict votes by having the voter submit an email address, which then has to be verified via an emailed code for the vote to count.

 

Below that, you can set the frequency at which people can vote for entries. Enter a value into the Participants may vote field.

Next, select whether the visitor can vote that many times per entry, per category or per campaign.

Then choose only or every.

Selecting every will provide more timing options. Click the link to choose between days, hours, minutes, seconds, or calendar days, then enter the number of your selected unit in the field.

When you're done, your options should read as a clear statement saying how often visitors can vote:

If you'd like to change the message that displays when someone has already voted, you can do so using the Error message... field.

You can enable a hidden Captcha for the Entry Display Widget that is completely transparent to the voters. It uses Google's reCaptcha behind the scenes to decide if the voter is a bot. If it thinks they are, it will reject the vote. With the slider bar, you may adjust the sensitivity - higher is more restrictive.

For information on how reCaptcha 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.

 

Additional Email Address Restriction Settings

Selecting the Email address restriction will require a bit of additional configuration. For more information on that process, check out our Setting Up Email Login for Voting help doc.

 

Advanced 

Check this box to start with vote button hidden. This is used when you want to show the gallery of content before someone enters the form, but can only vote after the form is submitted. You will use an Action Widget to show the Vote Button. 

 

Fields

The Fields section is where you can tweak different settings that affect how your entries are displayed in the widget.

The first things you'll notice are the checkboxes on the right. These are how you'll determine what shows in the tiles for each entry (in the campaign view) and what shows in the pop-up view that appears when you click any given tile. Simply check the box if you want that item to appear, or uncheck it if you don't.

There are additional options available for the Entrant name/user name field - click on the down arrow to expand that section.

Click on the link after Show to select how you want the name to be displayed on the entries. Your options are First name & Last initial (the default option), First name & Last name, First name & Last initial, First initial & Last name, First name only, Last name only, or you can choose to Hide the name completely.

If you've chosen to include Facebook Login as part of your entries, you can select whether to Show or Hide the entrant's Facebook profile image in the entry here.

Media sorting options can be changed by clicking the down arrow next to Photo/Videos on the right.

You'll then see how to change what media shows by default in the entry's tile. Clicking the link, you'll see your options are first uploaded media, first video uploaded, or first photo uploaded.

 

Share

Fine-tuning how the entries can be shared is done in the Sharing section. To start: enable sharing by checking this box at the top.

When you enable sharing, more options will pop in allowing you to get more granular with your entry sharing.

You can choose between showing the title, description, and image as provided in the entry, or you can use custom settings for each. Just click entry or custom to toggle the settings back and forth.

Below, you'll see a listing of all available share methods; click and drag the  icon to change the position in which that social media channel appears, and select which channels to use by checking/unchecking the box on the left of the name. The currently selected channel's name will be highlighted.

If you've selected custom for the title, description, or image; you'll be able to customize the settings for the selected social media channel on the right - the share is shown as a preview. Each channel will have slightly different settings (depending on how the site handles sharing), so make sure to click through all of the channels you're using to make sure each one is customized to your liking.

 

Text

You can change any of the default Text that appears in the widget by making changes here. Find the text that you want to replace in the left column, then type your replacement text in the field immediately to the right.

 

Visibility

If you'd like to limit visibility of the widget to a specific date and time, make the widget a popup, only show the widget in your Builder, or limit in which country/countries the widget can be seen; you'd do so here. More information about these settings can be found in the Widget Visibility help doc.

 

Extras

Learn about the Main Tag, CSS Classes, and Smart Labels settings here. 

 

Multi-Round Voting

You can create up to 3 rounds of voting, in each round narrowing down the entries to vote on. Here's how:

 

1. Add and Rename Entry Display Widgets:

• Add three Entry Display Widgets to your campaign.
  
  
• Rename each widget: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3.
  
  
• Connect each widget to the same List for the contest.

2. Configure Round 1:

• Open the Round 1 Entry Display Widget settings.
  
  
• Open the voting section and enable voting.
  
  
• Set the voting round to Round 1 and specify the timeframe.
  
  
• Save and exit.

3. Configure Round 2:

• Open the Round 2 Entry Display Widget settings.
  
  
• Expand the filtering section and check "Filter by votes/points."
  
  
• Select voting round 1.
  
  
• Enter the number of top entries to display in the field.
  
  
• Click Next.
  
  
• Enable voting.
  
  
• Set the voting round to Round 2 and update the timeframe.

4. Configure Round 3:

• Repeat the configuration steps for Round 3.

5. Update Visibility:

• Adjust the visibility settings for all widgets to show only during their respective voting rounds.