Surprisingly the amount of WordPress solutions for building quizzes, questionnaires and other survey-type forms is quite limited. There are some basic quiz plugins in the WordPress Plugin Repository and three prominent form plugins are pretty good that could do the job (Cforms II, Gravity Forms and Polldaddy) but they lack an easy to use way to create more complex types of forms.

The alternative is using non-WordPress third party services of which there are many. There are some impressive ones out there such as SurveyMonkey, Urtak and ProProfs. They are simple to use, have various styling options and are easy to sign up for, with reasonable pricing. But there’s too much detracting me:

- I want to keep it lowcost and not be perpetually tied to a cost model.

- I don’t want a third party to hold my data, I’d rather have it completely under my control / housed on our own  hosting servers

- I want to be able to create complex forms and modify them when most services – while flexible – have their limits.

- I need the ability to apply weighted scoring

- I need to customize the types of scoring methods

- I want to have different choices in the way a form is processed ( create a report with processed feedback for example )

- I don’t want to rely on a service that can disappear overnight, change their terms of services on the fly or access my data.

So naturally I’m looking at WordPress and I’ve decided to start development on a powerful form plugin to handle complex surveys that can be used for researchers, psychologists, coaches, talent hunters, assessment processors, lead generators and just about anybody that requires advanced types of surveys.

The benefit of creating it as an Open Source WordPress plugin is that users can run it on their own websites and make their own changes.

Currently, we would love to attract funders, partners or developers to aid the development by contributing financially or with ideas. If you are interested in being involved let me know. As of yet, I haven’t decided whether this will be an inhouse plugin only or if it will be released to the public, commercially or otherwise. If you become involved you will have a say.

A sneakpeek at some of the attractive features that will highlight the plugin:

- Facebook integration: run surveys inside facebook
- Advanced weighted scoring
- Mobile Friendly
- API for creating and processing forms dynamically
- Easy to use interface