Put a PollDaddy poll in your sidebar

Update: October 11, 2008 : PollDaddy polls have now been included in wordpress.com blogs.

Robert Stevenson has a working example of a PollDaddy poll (see the left sidebar).

PollDaddy Poll Features
* A selection of skins to choose from or create your own in CSS.
* Advanced online reporting in real time of your data as it is collected.
* Deliver your surveys by direct link or website popup.
* Insert HTML directly allowing you to add pictures, video and more.
* Full foreign language support.
* 11 question types to choose from with multiple options for each.
* Export your data as XML, CSV and subscribe to your results via RSS.
* Close surveys after a certain date or quota has been reached, and create custom start and finish pages for your survey.
* Create multi question, multi page surveys with ease using the new advanced survey editor.

These bloggers are happy to hear about the PollDaddy polls and they will be trying them out on their blogs in the near future.

Sports Narrative The Aspiring Horseplayer Mark Stoneman

Liebleing Arts Craftsaccidentalsexiness

Cooper Fine Art at Home Teck

There are many different third party providers of free polls on the internet. However, it’s important to note the following:

1. None of the polls that use javascript or forms can be used on wordpress.com blogs as the software will strip out the code to preserve security.
2. The nexodyne polls and gfx polls display dynamic updating on the blog as the votes are cast but, the nexodyne polls are too large to fit into a sidebar so, they must be placed either on a static page or in a post. There is also a more complete overview available blogging polls you can consult. Please also see the Tips for WordPress.com Bloggers below.
3. If your our blog is free hosted by WordPress.com then when you create a poll on PollDaddy.com, you can choose the new WordPress.com shortcode to insert into your blog post or static page or into a text widget in your sidebar.
4. If you are hosting your own version of WordPress then you can to install one of the plugins.

• For versions of WordPress older than 2.5, you can download the following file from PollDaddy and upload it to your plugins directory. (V1.0 plugin)
• For versions of WordPress 2.5 and newer, you can download the following file from PollDaddy and upload it to your plugins directory. (V2.5 plugin)
• Hart reminded me that the WP-POLLS wordpress plugin is also available. He uses them on his Battling for Health sites.

Tips for WordPress.com Bloggers

1. The polls must be set up on the third party site and linked to from a text widget, a post or a static page, as the voting must take place on the third party site and not on the blog.
2. To create the appearance of an onsite poll bloggers can simply create an image of and upload it into a text widget or onto a static page or post, linking the image to the third party poll for voting.
3. If you choose to have a PollDaddy poll on your blog here’s a useful tutorial.

PollDaddy Twitter polls! – Here you can quickly create a poll and post it as your Twitter status. Just fill out the form and hit send!