Frequently Asked Questions for SimpleQuiz - Quiz, Questionnaire & Survey Creator for Joomla!
This article describes how to install and use SimpleQuiz, or how to solve any common problems that you may face with it.
If you cannot seem to find what you are looking for, you can search the SimpleQuiz forum, or contact me.
General Questions
You can create quizzes, questionnaires and surveys, with total scores or percentages, and customizable text for the results, depending on user input, like score or specific answers. You can show these quizzes from menu items. Results are saved in the database, accessed from the back-end and optionally from the front-end, and sent to an email address, set per quiz.
No. SimpleQuiz is a Joomla! extension and can only be used within the Joomla! CMS.
That is very simple. You just login with your user account and navigate to Connect > My Purchases. Since July 2017, you can also use the Joomla! Updater feature!
Please refer to the SimpleQuiz download page, on the right.
Payment & License
You get unlimited usage on unlimited domains and websites. You get unlimited support (please read the Terms of Service for more information) and free updates for 1 year. After that, you may continue to use SimpleQuiz as you did, but to be able to receive updates, you would have to renew your license.
When you download SimpleQuiz, you get unlimited usage rights. That means you can install SimpleQuiz on a friend's site, but they won't be able to receive direct support or updates, and you should not share the zip archive you download.
Well, that is because Mavrosxristoforos.com extensions are not developed and maintained by a large company, but rather by Christopher Mavros, the developer and owner of this website. That means no expensive equipment and no large facilities, which results in low-cost development, and thus, low-cost extensions.
Installation & Configuration
To install SimpleQuiz, you follow the usual steps, as with installing any other Joomla! extension.
Navigate to Extensions > Extension Manager, and under the tab "Upload Package File", you select the zip archive you downloaded from Mavrosxristoforos.com, and click "Upload & Install".
Wait until the package file gets installed and you should see a completion message. You are ready to go.
You would have to create your quizzes, and show them somehow, through a menu item.
If you want to receive emails from the Quiz, you would have to write your email address while creating the quiz.
Note: For SimpleQuiz to be able to send any email, you must make sure that your Joomla! Mail Settings are correctly configured. For more information, please read the question below.
Any Joomla! extension that sends emails, requires that the Joomla! Mail Settings are properly configured. Those settings are found in your site's Global Configuration, under the Server tab.
Some servers allow the default settings (PHP Mail) to work just fine. Even though, it is better to use SMTP, according to your host directions for configuring an outgoing email client.
Anything not found in the Quiz, Question edit pages and the menu item options, can be found in the language ini files.
Please read here for more information about translating with the language ini files.
Extension Usage
No. SimpleQuiz can be used in unlimited sites and domains, with unlimited DB records. Enjoy ;)
First of all, you need to create the Quiz and its Questions in the SimpleQuiz Quiz Manager and Question Manager respectively. Those are found under Components > SimpleQuiz > Quiz Manager and Components > SimpleQuiz > Question Manager. Then, to show the quiz, you would have to create a SimpleQuiz Quiz layout menu-item.
In the menu item options, you can find some options regarding the quiz and results appearance.
You can go to Components > SimpleQuiz > Question Manager, and click "New" on the top left. Here's a video to see how:
You can create anything that consists of the following:
- Simple Text Answers (Question Type: Text)
- Multiple Choice Answers
- With only one selectable answer: (Question Type: Radio Buttons)
- With only one selectable answer and a text input (Question Type: Radio Buttons with the [option_text] tag
- With only one selectable answer and a score assigned to each answer (Question Type: Score Radio Buttons
- With multiple selectable answers: (Question Type: Check Boxes)
Sure. You should use the Quiz "Complete Text", and depending on your question types you can use the following tags:
- [percent] (shows the achieved percentage of correct answers, for quizzes)
- [score] (shows the achieved score for score quizzes)
- [percent < number]Some Text[/percent] (shows only if the achieved percent is less than the number specified*)
- [score < number]Some Text[/score] (shows only if the achieved score is less than the number specified*)
- [average_score_per_question] (only for score quizzes)
- [name]
- [email]
- [score:ID] (When you have multiple scores per quiz. See question below for more information.)
- [score:ID < number]Some Text[/score] (shows only if the achieved score for the specific ID is less than the number specified*)
- [question:id = answer]Some Text[/question] (shows only if the question specified by the id, had the specific answer*)
*For all filter tags above specified with the asterisk (*), you may use either the "less than" symbol (<), the "equality" symbol (=) or the "greater than" symbol (>). You cannot use more than one symbol per tag. To specify a range, you can write the following:
[percent > 24][percent < 51]This text will only show up if the user achieves percentage of correct answers from 25 to 50, inclusive.[/percent][/percent]
Sure. All you have to do is specify an ID, when writing the Question Text, next to the score tag.
Example:
[score:1=5/] If this radio button is selected, Score 1 will be incremented by 5.
[score:2=10/] If this one is selected, Score 2 will be incremented by 10.
Advanced Configuration
You can add extra fields in the Component Options. Specifically, you can find an option called "Include Extra Fields". Switch that to "Yes".
Just below, you will see an option called "Extra Fields". You can write the Extra fields you want in the following format:
Field Name;Type;Required
Example:
Country;text;required
Date of Birth;date;required
Notes;textarea;
Please note that the Field type is written directly into the input, unless its value is "textarea".
This means that you can use any type defined by HTML 4 and HTML 5 (but please, do check for browser compatibility).
Sure. That can be accomplished by using the "Playing Limit" in the Component Options.
Yes. You can create a menu item of type "SimpleQuiz > Results" and show the results of the quizzes. You can even show advanced charts, if you select that option in the Component Options. You must specify the "Chart Groups", in the following format (introduced in version 1.6.70):
Games;700x300;Label 1,Label 2,Label 3
RPGs;#1c4c7a;1,2,3
Strategy;#a4b7c9;4,5,6
-
Surveys;600x400;A Label 1,The Label 2
Customer Satisfaction Survey;#bd0000;q1,q2
The above text would create two charts.
The first chart's title is Games. Following, is the Chart Size, which for the first chart is 700 by 300 pixels. Then, you should specify the labels shown on the bottom of the chart, which describe the results of the Quiz or Question IDs, written in each chart line.
After specifying the Chart main details, you need to write one line for each group of data displayed. In our example, we have two lines: RPGs and Strategy.
Each chart line has a color, and the Quiz or Question IDs that it should display results for. The Question IDs are specified with a small latin 'q' before the ID.
The second chart is named Surveys and has a different size (600 by 400 pixels). Again, a few labels are set, and the first and only chart line shows data from the Questions with IDs 1 and 2.
Here is an example of how charts may look like.
Common Problems
Please configure your Joomla! Mail Settings. For more information on how to do that, please refer to the "Installation & Configuration" section, at question "How to configure my Joomla! Mail Settings".
Note: If your site is sending emails, but SimpleQuiz is not sending, please contact me.
This is normally produced when an email from address is not correct, or a recipient address is not correct. It may also happen if you are have configured your Joomla! Mail Settings to appear to be sent from your "Gmail" account, or similar, while you are using your website address to connect to SMTP. Some servers do not allow that.
This usually happens, when you create a Quiz and choose not to show the User Details Fieldset, while the default option for SimpleQuiz is to require an email from the quiz-taker. You can simply switch the "Show User Details Fieldset" in your Quiz, to "Yes", or set the option "Email Required" to "No", in the Component Options
This may happen with some editors that do not include Javascript code the same way as TinyMCE. For this reason, you can find an option called "Editor Help Compatibility Mode" in the Component Options. Please switch that to "No Quotes" and it should work.
This is a usual problem, which only happens if you have not configured your Update Options properly. Since this is a commercial extension, your Mavrosxristoforos.com account username and Paypal email are required for security reasons. If you do not know your Mavrosxristoforos.com account username, please search your inbox for the automatic message sent to your address right after purchasing SimpleQuiz.