Tag Archives: watupro

Low Memory Mode in WatuPRO

Plugin version required: 4.6.8.1 or newer.

This feature is built to help users who have too many quizzes and questions to still be able to use the quiz plugin WatuPRO on affordable shared hosts. You can’t expect wonders from shared hosting services and if you have many huge quizzes you may need to move to a VPS. But before this you can enable the “low memory mode” feature to reduce the resource usage at the cost of sacrificing a couple of small features.

How To Enable It

Go to WatuPRO Settings page and check the checbox saying “Enable low memory mode to reduce the server resources usage”.

What Does it Do

For the moment this mode reduces the server load on your Manage Quizzes and Manage Questions pages:

  • On Manage Quizzes page it hides the column “No. questions” and the number of users who took the quiz.
  • On Manage Questions page it hides the number of answers to a question.
  • Switches off the dashboard stats widget (the one in your main admin page that shows number of quizzes taken today, most popular quiz, and so on). The stats widget can be switched off individually from another option (without entering low memory mode)

For the moment these are the only changes applied by the low memory mode. As soon as we see pain points for users with high number of quizzes and questions we will add more optimizations.

The low memory mode can of course be used even if you already have a VPS or dedicated server to reduce the server resources usage.

What Else to Do

  • Avoid using the feature “Automatically store user progress as they go from page to page” on paginated quizzes. It causes server requests on each page change.
  • Avoid using the “show answer” button or the option that lets clicking on a single-choice immediately reveal the answer.
  • When a quiz is submitted an update query runs on student answers table. So if you have hundreds of thousands records in that table submitting a quiz may start taking more time. You may want to look at reducing your database data.

We have customers running this plugin on very heavy traffic sites with a lot of concurrent users. The plugin is as optimized as possible to the best of our knowledge. If you believe there is a problem on your server you need to provide us with information which specific query is slowing it down so we can take action. Usually it’s not WatuPRO but a different plugin that overloads the processor.

Likert Scale Survey Maker for WatuPRO

This is a new free addon for the quiz maker plugin WatuPRO.

The plugin allows you to create Likert scale surveys really quick. It also includes a couple of shortcodes to display the survey answers to the user in a bar chart.

Download the plugin: watupro-likert (version 0.8, 16 KB)

How Does It Work

The plugin creates a regular WatuPRO quiz with all questions marked as survey questions and automatically adds all the answers. It allows you to add many questions quickly and automatically adds all answers for the Likert scale. It’s a tremendous time saver for creating such type of surveys.

After activating the plugin you will see a new link under your WatuPRO menu: “Likert scale survey”. Have a quick look at the options:

likert

The page allows you to create up to 8 questions at one and then add more and more with the same settings (scale etc). Or change the scale for the next set of questions.

There are 5 scales supported: Agreement, Importance, Frequency, Likelihood, and Custom. All settings are editable.

Once the survey is created you will be directed to Edit Quiz page to fine-tune and publish the quiz. You can of course then edit the questions, add media, etc just like with every WatuPRO quiz.

The Bar Chart

To display the bar chart you need minimum WatuPRO version 4.6.7.8 because this is the version from which survey questions do not require the points assigned to them.

The bar charts are added via shortcodes (the survey maker can automatically add them for you). Here is example of a chart by category:

likert-chart

The table will follow the table style definitions of your theme. If you want to style it, it has CSS class “watupro-likert-chart”. The color of the bars is currently hardcoded to #AAA but this will be improved soon.

If you have missed to add the chart when creating survey, you can add the shortcodes later:

[watuprolikert-barchart type="global"] for a global chart

[watuprolikert-barchart type="cats"] for multiple charts per question category

[watuprolikert-barchart type="averages"] for a global chart showing averages from everyone's answers

Likert Survey Compact Table

From version 5.8.2 of WatuPRO a new experimental feature is supported. It allows you to display your survey in a very compact table where questions are column headers and answers show only radio buttons or checkboxes.

You can activate the feature from Edit Quiz -> Advanced Settings tab:

When you activate it, the survey will be displayed as table. As example, check the survey at the bottom of this page. There are a few things to note:

  • Selecting this will reset the quiz to “All questions on a single page” even if you have selected different pagination.
  • The option “Answer to each question can be seen immediately by pressing a button” will be deactivated.
  • The plugin will automatically figure out if it has to display different tables with different headers if you have groups of questions with different likert scale in the same survey.
  • Surveys generally do not have correct or wrong answers so using the %%ANSWERS%% variable at the end of the quiz is not typical. If you do use it, answers will be displayed in standard format for quizzes and not as a table.
  • To avoid layout misplacement radio questions that are selected to be shown as drop-downs will be reset to standard radios. Multiple-choice questions selected to behave like flashcards will behave like standard checkbox groups.

Here’s an example of such survey:

 Very ImportantImportantModerately ImportantOf Little ImportanceUnimportant
1. How important is for you the price of a software product?
2. How important is the support?
3. How important is the design?
4. A random open-end question in the middle of the survey

 AlwaysFrequentlyOccasionallyRarelyNever
5. How often do you check documentation before contacting support?
6. How often do you check online demos before purchasing software products?

 

Adding images in match/matrix answers

The answers area of the match / matrix questions in WatuPRO does not use the rich text editor. There is just no space to put it there because there are two boxes for each answer. The rich text editor will make the UI there bad.

But you can still add images there by entering HTML code. The easiest way to do so is this:

  • Scroll down just a bit to see the “Optional Answer Explanation” box
  • Click on its “Add Media” button
  • Locate or upload your image
  • Get its URL from the “Attachment Details” sidebar which appears when the image is clicked
  • Copy the URL
  • Enter <img src="URL HERE"> in the answer box and paste your URL in place of “URL HERE” words.
  • That’s it.