Web Applications

Smart Poll 1.0 Installation

Installing Smart Poll for MS Access 2000 Database

Smart Poll 1.0 Installation

Installing Smart Poll for MS Access 2000 Database

A. Contents of the zip file

Unzip the zip file to your root folder. You will find the following files under the SmartPollAdmin folder :

  1. MS Access 2000 Database (inside the database folder) : SmartPoll.mdb
  2. 4 Flash Interfaces : poll.swf, poll2.swf, poll3.swf and poll4.swf
  3. Flash files used in the Admin Panel : adminpoll.swf and addquestion.swf
  4. conn.asp - contains the connection string to your MS Access Database
  5. Admin Panel Functionality Files : 16 ASP files, 10 GIF images, 1 TXT file and a CSS styles file
  6. Single Website EULA (End User License Agreement) - License.html
  7. This Installation Guide - ReadMe.html
B. Quick Installation Steps (for your own site)
  1. Important : a) Place the complete SmartPollAdmin folder under your web site’s root directory only.
    b) Make a new folder under your site root called FlashFiles and copy the 4 Flash interface files: poll.swf, poll2.swf, poll3.swf and poll4.swf to it. Do not delete the original files under the SmartPollAdmin folder.
    c) Check if the MS Access Database SmartPoll.mdb is in the folder database under the SmartPollAdmin folder. Now give this folder (database) write permission for your SmartPoll to work (Please contact your server administrator to get this done).

  2. Accessing the Administration Panel : To access your Smart Poll Administration Panel, Please go to http://your_website_url/SmartPollAdmin/default.asp and login with the default UserName: administrator and Password : smartpolladmin. Please make sure that you change the user name & password immediately (using the change login data facility) to prevent unauthorized entry. If you forget your user name & password, you will need to get into your database and view the table tblPollAdmin to view it.

  3. Displaying the Smart Poll : To place your Smart Poll inside one of your site pages, log into the administration panel using the username and password, now click on the Interface Options link in the left menu, choose an appropriate interface and select the corresponding code displayed in a text box. Copy and paste it into your page. Please go to our online page Tips for Using Smart Poll to learn more about using these interfaces.

If you have your own site then your Smart Poll should work perfectly after following the above 3 steps.

C. Special Instructions for Free or Sub Sites

If you don't have your own site (e.g. you have a free site under brinkster.com) or have a sub site (a site not directly under the site root folder) but one that allows you to upload an Access database, then to make your Smart Poll work you need to do the following steps.

  1. Free Sites: Place the SmartPoll.mdb database file in the db folder under you root directory (there is no write permission for other directories on brinkster.com). If you are using some other free service place the database in the instructed database folder.
    Sub Folder Site: If you were successful in giving write permission to the database folder you needn't do anything. If not please make sure you place the SmartPoll.mdb database file in a folder with write permission.

  2. Change the path to your Database in the conn.asp page. Open the Code View of this page and you will immediately find the following lines clearly marked out for your convenience.

    '----------- Start of Database connection string ----------

    strDB="DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=" & Server.MapPath("/SmartPollAdmin/database/SmartPoll.mdb") & ";DefaultDir=" & Server.MapPath(".") & ";DriverId=25;FIL=MS Access;MaxBufferSize=512;PageTimeout=5"

    '----------- End of Database connection string ----------

    Now replace /SmartPollAdmin/database/SmartPoll.mdb with the new path to the database. For example: If we had a site called smartwebby with www.brinkster.com and the URL to this free site was http://www.brinkster.com/smartwebby/ plus the database file was under the db folder, then our new path would be : /smartwebby/db/SmartPoll.mdb

  3. All ASP files connecting to the MS Access database (10 files) use the above mentioned conn.asp file as an include file. Since the SmartPollAdmin folder is no longer under the site root you need to change the path to the include file, else your Smart Poll will not work. To do this easily, just find and replace the code : <!--#include virtual="/SmartPollAdmin/conn.asp" --> with <!--#include virtual="/your_site_path/SmartPollAdmin/conn.asp" -->. For example: For the above mentioned free site (smartwebby) under brinkster.com we will need to replace the include file code with : <!--#include virtual="/smartwebby/SmartPollAdmin/conn.asp" -->

Good Luck and Best Wishes from the Smart Webby Team! If you have any problems or suggestions please contact us at admin@smartwebby.com