Author Archives: admin

Watu, WatuPRO and MemberPress – Solution To an Issue

We’ve been very happy to have our plugin recommended by MemberPress. They have a great membership plugin there.

Unfortunately there is currently a problem that when the Watu or WatuPRO shortcode is placed inside their pages, our scripts and CSS are missing and the quizzes don’t work. While we are trying to get in touch with the folks at MemberPress to have this issue resolved together, there is a solution which will do the work:

Go to your plugin editor (or use FTP if you prefer), find MemberPress Courses and open the file:

app/views/classroom/courses_footer.php

Add the following code before the closing </body> tag:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

That’s all! Save and you’ll have the quizzes working again.

Charts In WatuPRO Reporting Module: Types and Shortcodes

From version 6.5.6 there are 3 new charts in the Reporting module of the quiz and survey plugin WatuPRO.

Quick links: Basic performance chart | Question performance chart |Cumulative poll chart |Charts per question category |All respondents performance | Pie Chart from Correct / Wrong / UnansweredCharts in My Quiz Reports pages

Basic Performance Chart

This is a simple chart showing your points collected vs. the maximum points that you could achieve in a single quiz attempt.  The chart can be used in the quiz final screen but for logged in users you can also use it elsewhere as long as you pass the attribute quiz_id as documented later below.

Chart shortcode: [watupror-performance-chart]

Attributes (all optional):

  • type – “bar” or “pie”. Defaults to bar (and generates a barchart)
  • mode – “js” (default) or “gd”. Used only if type is “pie”. Normally the chart is generated via the gRaphael javascript charting library. However if you plan to include it in email contents or allow PDF download of the final screen (using our PDF bridge), then you should set mode to “gd”. This will use the PHP GD library which must be installed on your server.
  • taking_id – use it if you want to show a chart for a specific quiz attempt. Usually you will display the chart on the final screen so taking_id is based on the current attempt. In this case the attribute should not be passed.
  • quiz_id  – used in case you want to show chart for the latest attempt of the currently logged in user on a specific quiz. Normally (showing chart on the final screen) you will skip this attribute.
  • your_color – the color of the bar or pie slice which displays the points you have collected. Pass a valid hex value like #FF0000 (no short syntax).
  • max_color – the color of the bar or pie slice which displays the maximum points that could be collected on that attempt. Pass a valid hex value like #FF0000 (no short syntax).
  • your_text – the text shown under your points bar or pie slice. Has default value for both chart types.
  • max_text – the text shown under the maximum points bar or pie slice. Has default value for both chart types.
  • bar_width – the width of each bar in pixels. Defaults to 100. Used only if type = “bar”.
  • height – the height of the highest bar in pixels. Defaults to 300. Used only if type = “bar”.
  • radius – the radius of the pie in pixels. Defaults to 100. Used only if type=”pie”.

Let’s see a couple of example usages so you get a better idea of this chart:

barchart without parameters

Shortcode used: [watupror-performance-chart] (all defaults, no parameters)

bar chart with parameters

Shortcode used: [watupror-performance-chart your_color="#f57e42" max_color="#038a05" height="250" bar_width="150" your_text="You got %d points" max_text="From %d max."]
Above is an example of the barchart with custom colors, text, and sizes.

Pie performance chart

Shortcode used: [watupror-performance-chart your_color="#2d5ba6" max_color="#a1a3ad" type="pie" radius=150]

Note that the pie chart is slightly different. The whole 360° represent the maximum points on the quiz. That’s why the two colors actually show points collected and points missed which is made clear by the default texts.

Questions Performance Chart

Similar to the above chart, this one shows your points as a percentage of the maximum points but for every question answered in the quiz.

It’s currently available only as a horizontal bar chart.

Chart shortcode: [watupror-questions-performance-chart]

Attributes (all optional):

  • taking_id – use it if you want to show a chart for a specific quiz attempt. Usually you will display the chart on the final screen so taking_id is based on the current attempt. In this case the attribute should not be passed.
  • quiz_id  – used in case you want to show chart for the latest attempt of the currently logged in user on a specific quiz. Normally (showing chart on the final screen) you will skip this attribute.
  • color – the color of the bars.
  • bar_width – the width of each bar in pixels. Defaults to 30. Note that because the chart is horizontal the “width” of the bar actually means it’s size vertically.
  • height – the height of the highest bar in pixels. Defaults to 300. Note that because the chart is horizontal this actually means the size of the bar horizontally.

Here is an example of this chart using a custom color:

performance per question in a single test attempt

Cumulative Poll Chart

cumulative poll chart, horizontal bars

This is a cumulative chart from everyone’s answers on a single question. By default it loads “correct/incorrect” chart on all question types except on “single answer” and “multiple answer” questions where it loads one bar per each answer.

You can force it to always show correct / incorrect by adding parameter to the shortcode: [watupro-poll question_id="X" mode="correct"].

You can also control the colors used in the chart like this: [watupror-poll question_id="X" correct_color="green" wrong_color="#FF0000"].

The optional parameter user_choice lets you show which is the current user answer when the shortcode is used in the “Final page”. You can pass any text or even HTML code (when using HTML make sure the rich text editor is in Text mode) and it will be shown next to the corresponding answer(s) or correct / incorrect stats. If you pass “CHECK” to the attribute we will generate a checkmark.
Example: [watupror-poll question_id=”X” user_choice=”CHECK”]

By default the shrotcode produces a horizontal bar chart. You can use the parameter “orientation” to make it a vertical one.
Example: [watupror-poll question_id="X" orientation="vertical"]

poll chart, vertical bars

Performance Per Categories

The chart showing user’s performance per question category in a single quiz attempt has several variations – a bar chart, a pie chart, multiple pie charts based on % correct  / % wrong answers in each question category.

Here is a basic example:

pie chart from user's performance per question category

You definitely need to read the whole article about this chart to find all the variations and possibilities it gives.

This same chart can show performance per question categories of a logged in user on all tests. To switch to this mode pass the attribute taking_id=”ALL” to the shortcode.

Everyone’s Performance Per Question Category

Bar chart showing everyone's performance per question category on a quiz

This chart works similar to user’s performance per question category but shows everyone’s. The chart can be used on a random post or page (does not need to be on the quiz final screen).

The shortcode accepts exactly the same parameters as the user category chart but requires the parameter quiz_id. Note that drawing the chart for a quiz that has been completed by tens of thousands of users may require a lot of server memory.
The parameter sum_subcategories=1 will sum up the subcategory performance into the parent categories and will not generate pies for the subcategories.

Here’s example shortcode usage:

[watupror-quiz-cat-chart quiz_id=X from="percent_max_points" colors="green, blue, yellow, black, orange"]

Your vs. Everyone’s Performance Per Question Category

Use the same shortcode as above but pass the parameter “compare=1”. It will produce two bars for each question category – one for you (current taking or passed parameter taking_id) and one for everyone’s performance.

Your vs everyone's result per category

With this shortcode you need to pass only two colors in the “colors” parameter. The color of your bar and the color of everyone’s bar.

Here is the shortcode that produced the above chart:

[watupror-quiz-cat-chart quiz_id=X from="percent_max_points" colors="crimson, blue" compare="1" width="30" orientation="horizontal"]

Available from WatuPRO 6.5.8.6.

Pie Chart from Correct / Wrong / Unanswered

This is a simple chart based on a single quiz attempt. It shares the same watupror-pie-chart shortcode which generates the performance per category chart above but with parrameter from=”questions”.

Example usage: [watupror-pie-chart from="questions" radius="160"]

Pie chart based on correct / wrong / unanswered questions

Charts Inside “My Quiz Reports” Page

Additionally the Reporting module provides several pages that contain detailed reports for each  registered test taker. Each user can see it’s own performance reports and charts. The admin can see everyone’s (see how).

These pages contain a couple of charts too:

charts from the user overview page

These charts are showing all time overview of taken tests per test category and questions answered per question category.

Skills / categories chart

The above simple bar chart shows proficiency per skill / question category from the Skills report page. It can be horizontal and limited further per test and filtered for desired proficiency level.

history of taken tests bar chart

The history bar chart shows the number of quizzes attempted in total for each month of the current year.

A/B Testing Of Email Message Subjects in Arigato Gozaimasu

The latest version of the Gozaimasu module of our premium WordPress auto-responder plugin supports A/B testing of message subjects. (This is different than the subscribe form design A/B tests. Check them too, they are great. It’s also different than split testing whole autoresponder messages.)

What Does It Do

A/B testing is a very powerful method to figure out what subjects in your messages draw more attention, email reads and clicks. Sending the same email but with different subjects to different subscribers can help you figure out what is the best subject.

Normally you would run A/B test for some time, then add or remove different subjects and at the end you will stop the test and use only the subject that works best.

How Exactly Does It Work

The A/B subjects feature picks one random subject for each email the software sends from the subjects which you have defined for the test. This is completely random. To avoid unnecessary queries and server overload it will not guarantee that each subject is picked equal number of times.

Here’s a basic example. You can create a welcome message in an autoresponder campaign. You want a catchy subject but you are not sure whether this is a good idea. So you can decide to run an A/B test between these two (or more) subjects:

Welcome to Our Newsletter!

or

Want To Learn About The Best Fitness Practices? You Came To The Right Place!

Some of your subscribers will receive the first subject, some the second. By looking at the reports: read stats, unsubscribe stats (and if you have the Intelligence module you can add trackable links for click stats), you will see which of these subjects performs better. This is simple and efficient.

How To Set It Up

The feature is available both for autoresponder messages and newsletters so let’s just see it on newsletters. On the Add/Edit Newsletter page you will see a checkbox for A/B Test next to the newsletter subject.

Clicking on it shows a new field and transfers your current subject to it. Clicking on the + sign next to it lets you add more variants, as many as you want:

screenshot of adding A/B subjects

Save the newsletter and now when it’s sent, it will pick these subjects randomly instead of the default Newsletter Subject field (empty fields will be ignored).

Absolutely the same works for autoresponder email messages.

Then in the Newsletter or Email message Reports page you will see a new link “Reports per A/B Subject” and will be able to see how many emails are sent with each subject, how many are read, the % read rate, and for Intelligence module owners also the trackable link clicks:

It’s worth noting that “read” stats rely on a tracking image. Since some email programs disable messages by default, the read number is not 100% reliable and sometimes shows slightly less than the actual number of read emails. It’s still a great way to identify which subject performs better.

Trackable link clicks will count one click per email message regardless how many links you have placed inside and how many times each reader clicked them. You want to know which subject makes people actually read the message and now if they clicked 10 links inside – counting all the clicks would defeat the purpose of the report.

In your Advanced Stats page, the Unsubscribe stats tab will also show reports based on A/B subjects for these email messages and newsletters which currently have an A/B test enabled:

Unsubscribe statistics

You may wonder why the number of emails sent total for this newsletter is higher than the sum of emails per A/B subject. This is because we were sending this newsletter for a while without running A/B tests and started using tests later.

The unsubscrbe stats per A/B subject are very useful: they can show you what subjects irritate the subscribers – probably because of looking spammy or maybe over promising (and then under delivering in the content of the email).