Help with building a research web site

Stoner

Hi all,

I’m looking for some help regarding getting information for my final project in college.
I wish to carry out research on people who play Metaworld games, I’m using two popular platforms to source people from, Second life and World of War Craft. I’ll need to ask a number of questions and use the answers to carry out some analysis and see what theories pop up. I’d imagine that I could get 1000 quantitative sets of figures from this I hope to see if any the effects that over playing these games is having on people and with the expansion of technologies like team talk etc see how players rate their new online friends.

To do this I need to build a web site that is hosted in cyberspace some where. I need to have this URL available so that I can give to people who can fill it out on line.

This is where I fall down, I have some small experience in building web sites, however where or how to get it hosted (I’ve an Eircom BB account they offer some free space???)

I also have no idea how to get the results back to me, I hoped that they could be saved somewhere so that I can download them in CSV format or something?
The nearest thing I’ve ever don to this is setting up a free guest book section on a web site as part of my study two years ago, that’ how far off the pace I am, this is a lot more info and I need to get this info into a spreadsheet to work on it.

If anyone has any tips on the software to use and how this can be achieved it would be great.

Thanking you in advance.

Stoner

mneylon

Depending on your budget ....

Use your free Eircom webspace - the URL will be forgettable

Register a .com and get some hosting - could cost you as little as 40 euro for the year

ressem

As far as accepting and retrieving the survey.

If you're looking for a thousand responses then you don't want each one posted to you. So the simplest way is to use a scripting language like php, asp, asp.net to insert a row to a hosted database when each form is submitted.

Take PHP and mysql, which are supported by lots of low cost host providers,
user does insert like
http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_insert.asp

Admin runs script like
http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_select.asp

to retrieve the results.

You might want another table and/or a bit of scripting containing username and password to stop everyone else, from google robots down from downloading the results.

Stoner

thanks for the help everyone, I'm still working on the questions to ask first, I'll just rent some space as you suggested blacknight, and ressem I think I'll go down the PHP route, but regardless of what happens I'll be back on here looking for help again !!!!

I have very limited skills, but I like the HTML from idea with the "insert php" page. At least I can bang away and have the html table page ready, I don't really care what it looks like but once I get it working I might aswell clean it up a bit with dreamweaver or something, anyway I hope that sounds like a rough plan. I'm still abit confused about how all the information will be stored, would it be a file that just grows with every entry and I'd just download it every now and then?

thebman

buildtolearn.com will give you free webspace (posting required) that will give you access to PHP/MySQL DB's etc.. that you might need and it's ad free too. Mighn't be suitable because you are depending on it.

If you don't have time for that nonsense you might have to go with a paid host. Spymac.com will give you free webspace with a banner ad. I don't know how much or anything because I use buildtolearn.com myself.

With buildtolearn.com you'll have yourname.buildtolearn.net which might be hard for people to remember.

However you can get a free dot tk domain which brings up a banner ad (this can be disabled in the options on your tk profile).

Just in case you really need a free option. I'd recommend paying for piece of mind and all that. Also it doesn't cost much.

The handiest way to do your test is to install a script that will allow you to ask the questions (there are tons of them out there).

http://www.scriptsbank.com/PHP_Scripts/Tests_and_Quizzes/index.html

^Some scripts for ya. A free one will likely be good enough for you.

http://dynamicdeeds.com/projects/scripts/index.php

^ That one would probably do you if you added some colours to the quiz or something to make it less boring looking.

Dooom

cjb.net gives free web hosting, and the address is yourname.cjb.net. Just a suggestion, I haven't used it recently so I can't really comment on what it's like.

/edit: actually there's a bunch of pop-ups and those annoying friend finder things, so maybe not...

kaizersoze

Or use a service like this.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/home.asp
Free basic survey for a 10 question, 100 response setup and $20 p/m for a 1000 response survey. It's not too bad if your survey is for a month or less.
You enter the questions and they do the rest.

Stoner

thanks again lads, I can get stuck into it now, thing is I learn some of this stuff in college but as I dont work at it, I dont get to develop it at all, budgets etc are not really a consideration I'm working and doing this part time, paying a few quid for a nice simple clean bit of space will be the road i go down.

Stoner

I'm trying feedback server

http://www.download.com/Feedback-Server/3000-2650_4-10400482.html

irlrobins

Moving to Webmaster forum