HD Quiz

Hi Larry,
I think I understand what you are looking for, but is there a reason you cannot just edit the page you are placing the shortcode on? I mean, if you need to edit the page to update the shortcode ID, why not just type in whatever content you want on the page before loading the quiz?

Sorry if I’m not understanding something.

Yes, I could just type in the introduction on the page. But, I want to change the quiz on this page fairly often to keep it fresh. I’m thinking I’ll cycle through my collection of quizzes- sometimes creating new ones, sometimes using old ones. If the introduction isn’t contained within the quiz, I’d have to keep re-writing the introduction each time I reuse a previous quiz. I guess I could paste the introductions in from a separate document or comment out the unused introductions in the html, but it would be so much easier if I could just change the quiz (and its introduction) simply by changing the shortcode.

So a “Quiz Introduction” text box that appears when the quiz starts would be ideal. Maybe it could be on the “General Quiz Options” page along with the “Quiz Pass Text” and “Quiz Fail Text” boxes? Or maybe another option might be to “pin” a selected question (or “Question as Title”) to the top of the quiz. This pinned question would always come first even if the questions are in random order or if you’re using a pool. I’d like to use the random order and pool features, but until I figure out the introduction part I can’t do that. My goal is to keep this quiz page fresh by frequently changing the questions /quizzes so that people will want to re-visit it.

I hope that clears up what I’m trying to do (and that there’s an easy change that can be made). Thanks again!

I see!

For now, I think that you are right that it’s probably easiest to just copy/paste from a document. You can even save a post as a draft so you can do it within WordPress. In the meantime, I’ll think about adding a section to allow people to add a custom description on a per quiz basis. My concern is that the vast majority of users won’t need this, and as a text editor area, it will slow down the settings page load and take lots of space.

Also, not sure if this is applicable to you (you may have questions that are completely different and just don’t belong together), but there is a feature called “Use Pool of Questions”. This feature allows an almost unlimited amount of quiz variations. With this feature, you can create one giant master quiz with all of your questions.

Let’s say you have 100 questions added to a quiz, and Use Pool of Questions set to 10. This means that each and every time the quiz loads, 10 of those 100 questions will be shown. Especially if you have Randomize Answer Order enabled, this creates a different experiece every time.

Dylan-
Thanks again for your quick response. I can certainly understand your reluctance in adding features that may only be used by a few users; especially if it impacts performance. I’m thinking that I’ll store the introductions in a private (or commented off) section at the bottom of the post and then copy/paste when I change the quiz. This information is specific to each quiz and conceptually it seems that it should be stored with the quiz, but again, I appreciate the problem of adding features that might only be used by a few users.

If I separate the introduction from the quiz I can now use the random order feature to make the quiz different on each attempt. And,I also intend to create extra questions for each quiz and use the “Use of Pool Questions” feature (the quizzes only have around 5 questions). Creating one quiz accessing my entire collection of questions would give a different experience each time, but I want each quiz to focus on its own topic. So I’ll still need to create multiple quizzes and store introductions for each.

I appreciate your consideration of this; if others voice a similar need it’s good to know that you’re listening and are willing make appropriate updates.

Thanks again! You’ve made a great plug in, and it’s getting some attention on the site when I change the quiz (BTW, here’s the quiz post: http://pitmanumc.org/wp/?p=22489).