Implemented Poll handler for Articles

[Bob]

It would be useful for articles to have polls attached to them rather than using the discussion thread for that. On my site, we don't use the discussion threads at all and instead use the comments on articles for simplicity.

One thing we are missing though is the ability to add polls to articles. I feel like I've suggested this before but I ran a quick search and couldn't find anything so maybe I imagined it.

Anyway, adding polls to articles would be useful in driving up user engagement and getting them to contribute their thoughts and opinions and basically get discussions flowing.

To extend this, polls could be featured or something. These could then be exposed as widgets for the sidebar to use with people being able to quickly vote on the poll topic and navigate straight to the article the poll is tied to.

This has been implemented in AMS 2.0.1

There is a new category setting (disabled by default), which when set, will allow a Poll to be created for articles in that specific category.



There is a new AMS Article permission which is required in order for members to Vote on polls that are on Articles.



Creating a Poll for an article is a bit different than Threads. For AMS, I am NOT including the ability to create the Poll while creating the article as there is just way to much involved to tack on even MORE to the article create, so creating a poll is only done after the article is created and is done via the "Create Poll" function that is part of the Article Tools.



When clicking on "Create Poll", an overlay will launch with the standard create poll form (this is controlled by the XF Poll Handler, not AMS).



Once created, the Poll will display above the Article (in this shot, you can see that its between the Cover Image and the Article).

Note: Before anyone asks, I do have plans to add a global option for Poll location (above article, below article, sidebar) as well as future options of letting the author set the poll location on a per article basis.



The edit poll function is controlled by the Poll Handler (so its the same for Articles as it is for Threads).

 

[Bob]

I've also added a new Widget Definition "AMS: Article poll" which allows you to create Article Poll Widgets. This works exactly like the ThreadPoll Widget Definition does.