Want to give your users something to do on your site? Give them a
poll - and learn a thing or two about ASP at the same time!
Introduction
Let's face it; Web sites are often very stale, static and boring.
Most developers realize this fact and that is why you will often
see parts of a site that do not seem necessary, but sure are a
lot of fun. Some sites use little mini-games done in
Flash,
others allow you to see neat
DHTML
effects, while others defer to the simple poll that keeps the
user interested and empowers them with the idea that they are
making a direct impact on the site's content.
Since polls are the most prevalent and useful of the bunch, I
thought it appropriate to show you how to build one. Building
this little polling system will also give you the opportunity to
learn more about accessing databases with ASP, and even a little
bit about cookies! This article does however assume that you have
some general knowledge about ASP and databases. If you are
lacking this foundation, check out
this article about ASP and Databases at WDVL. Also, for the
record, this design for a polling system (there are many ways of
doing it) is very loosely based off of a script I encountered on
the net a long time ago. I neither remember the author nor the
source, but I must give credit where it is due.
