Can I vote more than once?
The short answer is no, but it needs clarification. A competition has more than one photograph in it. You can vote only once per competition, but that single vote can (and should) be for more than one photograph. As you can score each photo with a different score (0-5), you can give each photo a "grade". My personal scoring technique is to try and only give one 5 score, a few 4's, and the rest in a kind of bell curve shape. If you give all votes a 5, it is the same as not voting - you have just pushed everyone along equally. Of course, some people like to vote for one picture only, and give it full marks. You can do this too, but the power of the voting system is seen when you spread your votes and comments around a bit.
Once you have voted, the vote button is removed from the competitions list. This is to stop people from voting more than once. If you vote more than once, you are clearly throwing the scores out, and it is thus considered "cheating" (see next comment). Please don't do this, even if for some reason you can.
Is it possible to completely eliminate cheating? (Voting more than once)
I don't believe so, even if the system was perfect. There will always be a certain element of honour. People can call or email their friends or family to vote for them. As long as votes have existed, people have been looking for ways to get around them, so I would not give away valuable prizes for a competition because it would only encourage cheating. I don't want to go into the techniques used in this software to stop cheating, and how you can defeat them, as I don't want to encourage that either. I do admit that it's possible to cheat, even easy, if you are determined.
I've changed my mind - can I change my vote after I've voted?
No, sorry.
A competition is "Closed" to me, why?
The open/closed status is based on dates set up by the administrator. If you have missed the dates, then you can not upload new pictures or vote. You can look at the results however.
I get the error message "There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time"
Depending on the server, there is a limit to the number of users that can access the site at a time. This is a limit with Windows, and is not a restriction of this software per say. Please try again later, when the server may be less busy. Also, you may want to inform the webmaster of your site that you have encountered this problem.
Server (Hosting) Questions
What does this software cost?
This software is shareware $20 for non commercial use. That is, if you want to run your own server and photo competitions you are asked to pay (using the Paypal button) the shareware fee. If you are interested in commercial use, please contact the developer. It is free to vote. There is a request for a Paypal donation in the footer of the site, but any payment is actually up to you (or the visitors). The software is in no way feature limited.
What are the system requirements to host a voting site?
The software will run in a limited capacity on
Windows NT 4 Workstation
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows XP Professional
The software will run in an unlimited capacity on
Windows NT 4 Server
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2003 Server
You must have IIS installed. The limitation here is on user connections. The non-server versions have a limit of 10 connections. That is, only ten users can connect at once. You need to watch the timeout settings too, as the default is about 20 minutes. This means that only 10 users can connect in 20 minutes! So you will probably want to reduce this timeout setting from 20 minutes to about 30 seconds. For a small site this may be acceptable, for others it will not. The solution is to use the "server" versions of the MS OS of course, which has cost implications. But hey, them's the breaks, it's how Microsoft makes it's money. I have had success turning off "keep-alives". See Microsoft Knowledgebase article 262635 for more details.
You also need a decent internet connection speed, and have to leaving your PC on all the time. It is possible to host this at an ISP, but read on about what you need to do. This software uses ASP, which is the visual basic like language that Microsoft uses behind it's web server, IIS. So, the server must support ASP, which probably means it has to be a Windows based machine running IIS. Linux and other UNIX servers are probably out, which a lot of ISP's use. Also, the results are stored in an Access database, which uses the JET 4 database engine. Lastly, you need to configure the physical path of the database file into one of the global parameters (for the connection string). You may need to update your copy of MDAC, which you can get from Microsoft downloads.
It is good practice to use the "Windows Update" feature to get the latest security patches for windows. IIS has had some major security flaws in the past.
I like the software but would like to customize it (eg club logos, new features), can I do this?
Yes, with some conditions. You must leave the footer intact, with the paypal button. You must include all original documentation. Please do not remove the copyright/URL comments. It would be polite and good, to also send an email informing the developer of what you are doing with this software. I like to know where it's being used too as reference sites.
Do I need a fixed IP address to run this?
It's good if you have one, but not strictly required. You can get around this with good tools such as at www.no-ip.com or www.ddns.com , both of which provide ways of tracking your IP so that this is not a problem. No-ip is recommended.
Does this software have viruses, ads or spyware?
No, no and no. At least, none when I shipped it.
What major features are planned in future versions?
There are a number of minor features that I want to put into the system, but the only really large remaining one is the Automated (user driven/unattended) picture uploads. At the moment the uploading of photos has to be done somewhere else. In the case of the C-5050 group, this is done in a public photo albumn. Once uploaded, the administrator of the competition has to collect these and save them in a folder on the hard drive. They also have to resize all of the images to comply with a thumbnail size. This is quite easily done with a photoshop script. However, I want to automate all of this. The trick is that this will probably mean the loss of anonymous voting. To stop multiple submissions, users will need to be registered. I'm still thinking about all of this. As the system works well now for how it is currently being used, this is a somewhat low priority.
The other feature needed was the creation of web based administration forms. This was done from version 1.0.0 onwards. If you used the software prior to that and were put off by the fact that direct table manipulation was required to get the thing going, please look again.
What did you use to write this software?
The machine I used runs Windows 2000 professional, and is my home PC. I used mostly Macromedia's excellent Homesite 5 to code the site. This is a glorified notepad really, which does do a good job of color coding the various code elements and handling multiple files open. I would have used Dreamweaver MX, but I don't have it. Oh, and Access 97 which is part of Office 97.
I am trying to install this but having problems getting it to work. What can I do?
The software does work, but it may not work for you! At least, not straight away. Perhaps the most common problem is one of reading/writing to the database. You need to check the connection string in the globals.asp file, and make sure you have write permission to the database folder/file. If you get really stuck, you should send the developer an email, see the Support page, outlining the problem. You could also do a search on the internet of the error message for clues as to what might be going wrong.