Our surveys are intended to draw the participant to the survey site by a postal letter they've received. This is because our business model must notify the participant by the Postal Service.

We apparently will need token-based URLs because once the participant takes the survey, that link should no longer work since each participant will have unique responses to the questions (if there is another way to limit the number of participants per survey without using token-based URLs please advise.)

So, the question is: are the URL's for token based URL's short enough to be printed in a regular letter without the participant needing to use a magnifying glass or other tedious method to type the URL into a web-browser window?

Thank you.

You can set the token length to whatever you need. (or upload your own tokens)

Best is
you create a short survey,
create a participants table with a dummy participant (yourself)
create the tokens.
Activate the survey.
Send the invitation email.
Then you see how your url looks like.

Joffm

Besides the answer of Tpartner:

For this purpose I would register a domain for this specific survey which redirects respondents directly to the survey URL. Because it is one thing for a URL to fit onto a page, it is another thing to make it short and clear to avoid typos, etc. You are already making the respondents life difficult by sending this via snail mail, you should do everything to make your respondets life as easy as possible.

So invest the 10 Dollars or so for a domain specifically for this survey. Or at least create a simple subdomain to your normal domain and redirect this to to the survey. E.g. satisfaction2018.domain.tld

Then you just have to print the individual token. As they have to type everything anyway, you can separate the Token from the URL.

When respondents type in the domain, they will be asked to type in the token into a text field.

I think given the circumstances of sending a invitation to an online survey via snail mail, this is the best user experience you will be able to provide.

Joffm wrote: Best is
you create a short survey,
create a participants table with a dummy participant (yourself)
create the tokens.
Activate the survey.
Send the invitation email.
Then you see how your url looks like.

You don't even need to send the email. In the participant table, you can see the URL when you hover over the little wheel thingy.

holch wrote: For this purpose I would register a domain for this specific survey which redirects respondents directly to the survey URL.

You even go one step further and use a wildcard-subdomain approach in combination with a small rewrite of the URL.

The link for each participant would look like this:
token.mysurvey.tld


The rewriting script would redirect to the survey and place the subdomain as token in the URL.

For Apache the typical approach can be seen here.
stackoverflow.com/questions/29994748/pas...ethod-in-codeigniter

Which doesn't increase the usability at all, because you still have to type the token somewhere.

I personally would guess, that respondents will understand it easier to go to a website (domain) and then include a code, rather than having the code in the URL, but this is just a guess.

It for sure is another option to do this. But with an extra step in programming the redirect.

Thanks for all the excellent replies. I like the idea of the token. Of course I would rather email the participants the link but in this particular survey we neither have, nor can get access to, participants emails as the survey is sent out blind to addresses in an area - thus the need for them to open the snail mail letter and type in a URL with some kind of token.

And actually even though it's paper, people generally open envelopes if they are addressed properly and don't look like they are coming from an advertiser or commercial entity. And we are neither of those.

I need the participants to be able to type in the shortest URL possible. I do have a domain for this but since there will be many, many surveys blanketing an area and each one on a different subject matter, it's not feasible to create a domain specifically for that user, but perhaps I can use some .htaccess kung-fu to do the same and redirect them to the actual survey.

Suggestions on that?

Hmmm. . . now reading some of the other interesting options I just have one question: if I have a sub-domain for that particular survey, does that mean a completely new install each time of limesurvey, for that survey for each sub-domain?

The survey URL generated by limesurvey is not overly long, but it is also not a very short and easy to remember URL.

As you have a domain, I would actually really suggest to do some ".htaccess kung-fu".

From what I understood, you will have a lot of different surveys, so it is not feasible to do one domain per survey. That is understandable.

But what you could do is:

yourdomain.tld/599791/ redirect to the actual survey URL, which would probably look something like this:

yourdomain.tld/index.php/599791

it would be even nicer, to have a word instead of a number.

You could do something like:

yourdomain.tld/smarthome/ and redirect it to your survey.

Then if the survey is token based, they will be greated with a form to put the token and then can continue.

I think this is fairly easy to use, even if they have to type the URL and the token.

Bingo! That's the way to go! Thanks!

But wait! I just realized - isn't limesurvey smart enough so that if someone shows up at the front, i.e., www.limesurvey-at-mydomain.com

that it asks for a token there and once entered, grants access to that particular survey?

No. There is one token table per survey. Within the token table tokens are individual (if LS creates them), but you could have the same token in different surveys. Not very likely, but it could happen that LS generates the same token for different surveys (its chance...). So if you have different surveys, you need to either have one domain per survey or have one of the solutions above.

Outside of Limesurvey you might actually be able to create something like that.

You could put a custom PHP script onto the index page of your domain. Then you would have to create your own token system that for example includes the an ID for the survey in the token. You can create your own tokens .

So lets say, the smarthome survey gets the ID 546, then you could start all tokens for this specific survey with 546 and then add the token to it. Your "Token" would look like 5468879072 then. With your php script you would check the token that was inserted, read out the first 3 digits, know that this is the smarthome survey, create the survey link including the token and your respondents go straight into the smarthome survey without having to insert the token again.

But of course, this will need some custom coding on your side. This is nothing that LS offers out of the box.

Hmmm. . . now reading some of the other interesting options I just have one question: if I have a sub-domain for that particular survey, does that mean a completely new install each time of limesurvey, for that survey for each sub-domain?

No, not necessarily. You can configure your webserver to redirect/point to a specific URL on your server depending on your subdomain.

Yes, generally many hosters create a specific folder when you create a new subdomain. But if you are fit in webserver administration, you can create this dynamically. And many also offer to only point a subdomain to an already existing URL, not necessarily create a new "account". This is DNS and webserver stuff and has little to do with Limesurvey itself, but rather with webserver administration.