LimeSurvey has a learning curve and when you dive in, you may think that it is much easier to start with SurveyMonkey or another commercial system. You are right. But ….
LimeSurvey sometimes feels like the infamous Swiss Army knife with 1001 tools attached to it. It is indeed very versatile and many things that you cannot do with the more “easy” systems, can be accomplished with LimeSurvey.
Besides that, it is open source, so downloading and installing LimeSurvey on your own laptop or your own server, does not cost you and you can experiment what you want.
Here are some places to get knowledge and people that may want to help.
Free sources of LimeSurvey knowledge
The official LimeSurvey Help Center is maintained by the LimeSurvey developers and should be up to date: https://help.limesurvey.org/portal/en/kb
The LimeSurvey Manual is maintained by the community: it depends on people willing to add documentation. Is has more insights in LimeSurvey than the Help Center, but be aware: the tips may apply to older versions of the software. You can find it at: https://manual.limesurvey.org/LimeSurvey_Manual
If you already have a LimeSurvey ID (for your hosted version of LimeSurvey) you can use these to log in and adapt pages when you want to participate in documenting LimeSurvey. It is not meant for asking for help, for that you can use the Forum.
The LimeSurvey Forum is the online place where power users and beginning users share their tips, tricks and sometimes frustrations. Several people are very willing to help, but….
- the forum is run by volunteers that help people in their free time. So please be polite and do not shout (USING CAPITALS ONLY) or hurry up people, this will make you get grumpy answers.
- please help the volunteers help you, so specify clearly what you want to solve, what you have already done and what error messages to possibly encountered.
- most important: specify your LimeSurvey Version, your hosting plan (paid to LimeSurvey.org or on own server) and the theme that you use (standard LimeSurvey theme (Vanilla, Fruity or Bootswatch) or if you use a custom theme.
- TIP: if you use a custom theme and something goes wrong in your survey, first test the same survey with a standard theme. If that works, you problem may (most probably) lie in the custom theme.
You can find the Forum at: https://forums.limesurvey.org/
Another good source is the Discord channels. Here several developers ask and answer questions. Most of them are very willing to help. You can find the Discord channels at: https://discord.gg/2GRsW6qQfu
When you encounter bug in LimeSurvey, please enter a bug report at the LimeSurvey bugs and feature requests at: https://bugs.limesurvey.org/my_view_page.php Also here: your LimeSurvey login is the same as on the LimeSurvey site and the Forum. Best way to enter a bug report:
- clearly state what you wanted to happen and clearly state what happened in stead. Also add the error messages, your version of LimeSurvey and the theme that you use. When picked up by one of the developers , they may ask you for further investigation.
- when you are able to program yourself: please file the bug report and make a pull request.
Commercial LimeSurvey services
The LimeSurvey universe also has some power users that offer their services. Respondage is one among them. Please contact us when you have a specific need. We specialize in:
- LimeSurvey theming
- LimeSurvey training for beginners and advanced users
- Consultation on how to develop surveys and quizzes
- … and when we cannot help you, we probably know who can.
