LimeSurvey
Encyclopedia
LimeSurvey is an open source
online survey
application written in PHP
based on a MySQL
, PostgreSQL
or MSSQLdatabase
, distributed under the GNU General Public License
. Designed to be user-friendly, it enables users to develop and publish surveys, and collect responses, without doing any coding.
that is installed to the user’s server
. After installation to the user's server, users can manage LimeSurvey from a web-interface. Users can use rich text in questions and messages, using a rich text editor, and images and videos can be integrated into the survey. The layout and design of the survey can be changed by modifying the template
. Templates can be changed in a WYSIWYG
HTML
editor. Additionally, templates can be easily imported and exported through the template editor. Once a survey is finalized, the user can activate it, making it available for respondents to view and answer. Likewise, questions can also be imported and exported through the editor interface. LimeSurvey has no limit on the number of surveys a user can create, nor is there a limit on how many participants can respond. Aside from technical and practical constraints, there is also no limit on the number of questions each survey may have.
Questions are added in groups. The questions within each group are organized on the same page. Surveys can include a variety of question types that take many response formats, including multiple choice
, text input, drop-down list
s, numerical input, slider input, and simple yes/no input
. Questions can be arranged in a two-dimensional array
, with options along one axis based on the questions on the other axis. Questions can depend on the results of other questions. For instance, a respondent might only be asked about transportation for his or her commute if he or she responded affirmatively to a question about having a job.
and graphical analysis of survey results. Surveys can either be publicly accessible or be strictly controlled through the use of "once-only" tokens, granted only to selected participants. Additionally, participants can be anonymous, or LimeSurvey can track the IP address
es of the participants. A much more detailed listing of features can be found on the LimeSurvey web page http://www.limesurvey.org/en/about-limesurvey/features.
s offer LimeSurvey hosting, either as a custom installation or through a control panel
, such as cPanel
with Fantastico
, Plesk
and Virtualmin
Professional. LimeSurvey has also been ported by third parties to various content management system
s, such as PostNuke, and XOOPS
. A port to Joomla exists, but it is not compatible with version 1.5 of Joomla.
The main developer and project leader of the LimeSurvey project, Carsten Schmitz, is also the owner of LimeService, a company which offers LimeSurvey hosting for a small fee. This service is similar to web application
s such as SurveyMonkey
; the main difference being that LimeService's fees are based on the number of people that respond to the survey and not on the time that the survey is active for, like other similar services. LimeService offers up to 25 free responses per month, after which responses can be purchased in one of several packages.
character set
. Primary translations include: Albanian, Basque, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish. There are also many other partial translations in other languages .
LimeSurvey is used by several notable organizations, such as the Austria
n Vorarlberg
State Government, Ars Electronica
, and several open source organizations such as OpenOffice.org
, Ubuntu
, and GNOME
. LimeSurvey is also used by a large number of educational institutions around the world.
project called PHPSurveyor on February 20, 2003 and was originally written by the Australian software developer Jason Cleeland. The first public release, version 0.93, was published on March 5, 2003. The project quickly developed a large audience of users after the development of advanced features such as branching (conditions), token control and templating.
In 2004, during the 2004 U.S. presidential election
, PHPSurveyor was used to gather data about voting irregularities. It identified over 13500 incidents in the first 10 hours of voting and was selected as part of their Election Incident Reporting System
.
In early 2006 the project lead was given to Carsten Schmitz, a German IT project manager. On May 17, 2007 the project name was changed from PHPSurveyor to LimeSurvey in order to make software licensing
easier by not including PHP
in the name.
In late 2008, a LimeSurvey hosting service named LimeService was created by LimeSurvey project leader Carsten Schmitz. It hosts LimeSurvey for users for a small fee per response.
As of June 4, 2008, LimeSurvey is ranked highly on SourceForge.net, with an overall rank of 99 out of over 100,000 projects as of June 4, 2008. It has been downloaded more than 200,000 times and its development status is listed as "5 - Production/Stable, 6 - Mature".
In 2009, LimeSurvey participated in the Google
Summer of Code, a program encouraging students older than 18 years old to work on projects aimed at helping open-source projects. The student projects helped develop the interface and statistical modules of the upcoming LimeSurvey 2.0.
In 2010, LimeSurvey once again participated in Google Summer of Code. Students developed a Database Storage Engine for LimeSurvey 2.0, and implemented the much demanded “File upload question” type. In November, LimeSurvey also participated in the Google Code-in, a similar program rewarding high school students to contribute to open source projects. Tasks ranged from improving LimeSurvey’s Wikipedia
pages to enhancing the user interface. LimeSurvey will also participate in the 2011 Google Summer of Code.
As of 2010, LimeSurvey has 2,944 weekly downloads on SourceForge
, and an Alexa
traffic rank of 32,633.
. Besides the structural code changes for better modularity the new version will also have a much more accessible GUI with a complete new design using AJAX
technology - modularity and GUI
accessibility are major points in which the current 1.x version is currently lacking.
award in the category Enterprise Management. The Les Trophées du libre contest recognizes innovative and promising open-source projects. In 2008 LimeSurvey was nominated in the category Best Project for the Enterprise in the SourceForge.net
Community Choice Awards 2008.
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
online survey
Statistical survey
Survey methodology is the field that studies surveys, that is, the sample of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample. Polls about public opinion, such as political beliefs, are reported in the news media in democracies....
application written in PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
based on a MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
or MSSQLdatabase
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
, distributed under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. Designed to be user-friendly, it enables users to develop and publish surveys, and collect responses, without doing any coding.
Basic features
LimeSurvey is a web applicationWeb application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
that is installed to the user’s server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
. After installation to the user's server, users can manage LimeSurvey from a web-interface. Users can use rich text in questions and messages, using a rich text editor, and images and videos can be integrated into the survey. The layout and design of the survey can be changed by modifying the template
Web template system
A Web template system describes the software and methodologies used to produce web pages and for deployment on websites and delivery over the Internet. Such systems process web templates, using a template engine...
. Templates can be changed in a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
editor. Additionally, templates can be easily imported and exported through the template editor. Once a survey is finalized, the user can activate it, making it available for respondents to view and answer. Likewise, questions can also be imported and exported through the editor interface. LimeSurvey has no limit on the number of surveys a user can create, nor is there a limit on how many participants can respond. Aside from technical and practical constraints, there is also no limit on the number of questions each survey may have.
Questions are added in groups. The questions within each group are organized on the same page. Surveys can include a variety of question types that take many response formats, including multiple choice
Multiple choice
Multiple choice is a form of assessment in which respondents are asked to select the best possible answer out of the choices from a list. The multiple choice format is most frequently used in educational testing, in market research, and in elections-- when a person chooses between multiple...
, text input, drop-down list
Drop-down list
In computing with graphical user interfaces, a drop-down list is a user interface control GUI element , similar to a list box, which allows the user to choose one value from a list. When a drop-down list is inactive, it displays a single value. When activated, it displays a list of values, from...
s, numerical input, slider input, and simple yes/no input
Boolean
Boolean may refer to:* Boolean algebra, a logical calculus of truth values or set membership* Boolean algebra , a set with operations resembling logical ones* Boolean data type, a certain datatype in computer science...
. Questions can be arranged in a two-dimensional array
Matrix (mathematics)
In mathematics, a matrix is a rectangular array of numbers, symbols, or expressions. The individual items in a matrix are called its elements or entries. An example of a matrix with six elements isMatrices of the same size can be added or subtracted element by element...
, with options along one axis based on the questions on the other axis. Questions can depend on the results of other questions. For instance, a respondent might only be asked about transportation for his or her commute if he or she responded affirmatively to a question about having a job.
Advanced features
LimeSurvey also offers several more advanced features. It provides basic statisticalStatistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
and graphical analysis of survey results. Surveys can either be publicly accessible or be strictly controlled through the use of "once-only" tokens, granted only to selected participants. Additionally, participants can be anonymous, or LimeSurvey can track the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es of the participants. A much more detailed listing of features can be found on the LimeSurvey web page http://www.limesurvey.org/en/about-limesurvey/features.
Hosting
Numerous web hosting serviceWeb hosting service
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...
s offer LimeSurvey hosting, either as a custom installation or through a control panel
Control panel (Web hosting)
A control panel, in web hosting, is a web-based interface provided by the hosting company that allows customers to manage their various hosted services in a single place.Some of the commonly available modules in most control panels:* Access to server logs....
, such as cPanel
CPanel
cPanel is a Linux based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site...
with Fantastico
Fantastico (web hosting)
Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications to a website. Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel such as cPanel...
, Plesk
Plesk
The Parallels Plesk Panel software package is a commercial web hosting automation program. Originally released under the U.S. company Plesk Inc. and designed in Novosibirsk, Russia, Plesk was acquired by SWSoft in July 2003...
and Virtualmin
Virtualmin
Virtualmin is a domain hosting and web site control panel, which gives the ability to create and manage many domains and is available in both Open Source and commercial versions. It is based on Webmin.-See also:* DirectAdmin* cPanel...
Professional. LimeSurvey has also been ported by third parties to various content management system
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
s, such as PostNuke, and XOOPS
XOOPS
XOOPS is a free open source content management systems , written in PHP. It uses a modular architecture allowing users to customize, update and theme their websites. XOOPS is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License and is free to use, modify and redistribute.-Overview:XOOPS is...
. A port to Joomla exists, but it is not compatible with version 1.5 of Joomla.
The main developer and project leader of the LimeSurvey project, Carsten Schmitz, is also the owner of LimeService, a company which offers LimeSurvey hosting for a small fee. This service is similar to web application
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
s such as SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a private American company that enables users to create their own web-survey, using free and enhanced paid products and services. The company's offices are located in Palo Alto, California and Portland, Oregon. The company was founded in 1999 by Ryan and Chris Finley...
; the main difference being that LimeService's fees are based on the number of people that respond to the survey and not on the time that the survey is active for, like other similar services. LimeService offers up to 25 free responses per month, after which responses can be purchased in one of several packages.
International features
Both the frontend and backend of LimeSurvey are available in more than 50 languages and dialects; 22 of these have over 95% of the translations done. It uses an UTF-8UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
character set
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
. Primary translations include: Albanian, Basque, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish. There are also many other partial translations in other languages .
Applications
LimeSurvey has a variety of applications. It allows users to create and host high quality surveys, ideal for general data gathering purposes. It can be used in many different areas for collecting data from customers and employees. .LimeSurvey is used by several notable organizations, such as the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n Vorarlberg
Vorarlberg
Vorarlberg is the westernmost federal-state of Austria. Although it is the second smallest in terms of area and population , it borders three countries: Germany , Switzerland and Liechtenstein...
State Government, Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
, and several open source organizations such as OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
, Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
, and GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
. LimeSurvey is also used by a large number of educational institutions around the world.
History
LimeSurvey was registered as a SourceForge.netSourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
project called PHPSurveyor on February 20, 2003 and was originally written by the Australian software developer Jason Cleeland. The first public release, version 0.93, was published on March 5, 2003. The project quickly developed a large audience of users after the development of advanced features such as branching (conditions), token control and templating.
In 2004, during the 2004 U.S. presidential election
United States presidential election, 2004
The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator...
, PHPSurveyor was used to gather data about voting irregularities. It identified over 13500 incidents in the first 10 hours of voting and was selected as part of their Election Incident Reporting System
.
In early 2006 the project lead was given to Carsten Schmitz, a German IT project manager. On May 17, 2007 the project name was changed from PHPSurveyor to LimeSurvey in order to make software licensing
Software licensing
A software license is a legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of software. All software is copyright protected, except material in the public domain. Contractual confidentiality is another way of protecting software...
easier by not including PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
in the name.
In late 2008, a LimeSurvey hosting service named LimeService was created by LimeSurvey project leader Carsten Schmitz. It hosts LimeSurvey for users for a small fee per response.
As of June 4, 2008, LimeSurvey is ranked highly on SourceForge.net, with an overall rank of 99 out of over 100,000 projects as of June 4, 2008. It has been downloaded more than 200,000 times and its development status is listed as "5 - Production/Stable, 6 - Mature".
In 2009, LimeSurvey participated in the Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
Summer of Code, a program encouraging students older than 18 years old to work on projects aimed at helping open-source projects. The student projects helped develop the interface and statistical modules of the upcoming LimeSurvey 2.0.
In 2010, LimeSurvey once again participated in Google Summer of Code. Students developed a Database Storage Engine for LimeSurvey 2.0, and implemented the much demanded “File upload question” type. In November, LimeSurvey also participated in the Google Code-in, a similar program rewarding high school students to contribute to open source projects. Tasks ranged from improving LimeSurvey’s Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
pages to enhancing the user interface. LimeSurvey will also participate in the 2011 Google Summer of Code.
As of 2010, LimeSurvey has 2,944 weekly downloads on SourceForge
SourceForge
SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
, and an Alexa
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
traffic rank of 32,633.
Version 2.0
The LimeSurvey development team is currently developing a new LimeSurvey 2.0 version. The code base for LimeSurvey 2.0 is being completely re-written from scratch using a MVC (Model-View-Controller) approach and the PHP framework CakePHPCakePHP
CakePHP is an open source web application framework for producing web applications. It is written in PHP, modeled after the concepts of Ruby on Rails, and distributed under the MIT License.-History:...
. Besides the structural code changes for better modularity the new version will also have a much more accessible GUI with a complete new design using AJAX
Ajax
- Mythology :* Ajax , son of Telamon, ruler of Salamis and a hero in the Trojan War, also known as "Ajax the Great"* Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, ruler of Locris and the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War.- People :...
technology - modularity and GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
accessibility are major points in which the current 1.x version is currently lacking.
Reception
In December 2007, LimeSurvey won the first place Les Trophées du LibreLes Trophées du Libre
Les Trophées du Libre contest is a free software contest whose goal is to promote innovative software projects and give these projects recognition and media coverage - recently also to motivate students and academic institutions with special prizes. The competition is international and it is...
award in the category Enterprise Management. The Les Trophées du libre contest recognizes innovative and promising open-source projects. In 2008 LimeSurvey was nominated in the category Best Project for the Enterprise in the SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
Community Choice Awards 2008.
External links
- LimeSurvey - official site
- SourceForge.net project site
- Vulnerability Report from SecuniaSecuniaSecunia is a Danish computer security service provider best known for tracking vulnerabilities in a large variety of software and operating systems.Numbers of "unpatched" vulnerabilities in popular applications are frequently quoted in software comparisons....
- Article in The Age News Article in Australian Daily Newspaper The Age on PHPSurveyor use
- PHPSurveyor: an appreciation - ZDNetZDNetZDNet is a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive, along with TechRepublic and SmartPlanet. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991 as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication owned by CNET...
blog article - Web Survey Methodology article
- Simple polling with LimeSurvey - Linux.comLinux.comLinux.com is the name of a website owned by the Linux Foundation. The site is currently a central source for Linux information, software, documentation and answers across the server, desktop/netbook, mobile, and embedded areas. Linux.com offers free Linux tutorials, news and blogs, discussion...
article on June 5, 2007