wQuiz PHP – web quiz for Linux LAMP servers – now in alpha 0.4.0

I’ve now released an alpha version of the new PHP version of wQuiz – an open source web quiz program.

This is still in alpha so it is not yet suitable for running on a production system, but is ready for general testing.

It has taken about a year and over 8,000 lines of code to completely rewrite the entire code from perl (version 0.3 and earlier) to PHP. This will allow for easier integration into PHP web sites and will make it easier to incorporate new features in future.

Known issues at the moment:

• No upgrade option from earlier versions
• Limited documentation
• CSS improvements required for the default theme
• Further testing necessary

This new version is close to the previous version, but in PHP rather than perl.
There are some new features. The main change is that there is no longer a need for an “answer” button on each page as the navigation buttons instead submit the answer (the answer button can still be enabled if required). The offline option now uses Javascript print pop-ups rather than being a page click away.

There are also improvements in terms of administrating the site as the configuration is simplified and more of the settings can be handled through the web page rather than editing the configuration files.

The main benefits will be realized in future versions. The modular OOP based code will make it easier to update and add new features in future. This will include better integration with social networking sites.

Code is currently available from Google code project wquiz.
The alpha version is available in the download section or the latest update is available from the svn repository. Now the project is stable I hope to only commit updates that don’t break the program.

More details will be made available in future through the wQuiz project home page.