How do I create my own polling website?

Question

I want to create my own website that is kinda on the basis of MrPoll.com or SodaHead.com. Anyone have any idea what software I would need and what kind of money it takes.

Answer 1

A blank website can be as low as $10 month. You might plan on $1000-$10,000 for web design and programming costs depending on how complex you want to get. Then on an ongoing basis you'll need to pay a system admin for site maintenance and updates. Since you don't know where to start I suspect you don't have the skills to do any of those, but it's all something you can learn if you want to take web design/programming courses. Don't forget you have to promote and market your web site to get traffic.



or you can use the features on those existing sites to run your own poles.

Answer 2

If you plan to host the website on your own computer, and you have a good internet plan with unlimited bandwidth, then you could do this quite cheaply.



A basic poll with a few options and a submit button is fairly simple to make. All you'd have to do is add 1 to the SQL database for each vote. The only part that could be difficult to figure out would be making sure people only vote once. You might want to use multiple methods (by session, cookie, IP, etc.) to try your best to stop people form voting twice.

I think the design would actually be more complicated than the actual program. You would have to design all the content surrounding the polls as well as the look of the polls. Usually poll results are accompanied by a bar graph, and you would have to dynamically update the graph based on the number of votes!



Good luck!

Answer 3

Well.. That's tough, you need programming experience and money to buy hosting for the website (assuming it would get popular) I'd say between $20-150 a month depending on popularity/bandwidth use. Software wise, nothing really you just need to know how to create a poll base, have a nice website design obviously, and your set.