Everyone knows it’s election year. All I have to do is turn on the big screen in the burrow and there it is. One candidate after another fighting it out. And the phone calls. Oy. The phone never stops ringing in here! (and burrows echo!)

Now suppose, just for instance, you wanted to have your own poll on your very own website! How cool is that? And so simple, even a candidate could figure it out.

=)

Okay, so first we’re going to go to our dashboard and click POLLS. This window here will pop up

If you’ve never created a poll, you’ll choose Auto-create a new account (recommended). And then click the DO IT! button.

Click on the blue Create a Poll Now button.

Okay, nobody panic! We’re going to take this one step at a time. Breathe into a paper bag over there lady, you sound like a freight train!

In the very top box, we’re putting in the question you want to ask for your poll. No question? No need for a poll. So our question is – Who would you REALLY like for president?

Now notice, on the right side of this box, you can add an image or what have you. Maybe a nice flag photo would work, but think small!

Now the next 3 boxes are your pre-given answers to the questions. So in the first box, we’ll put it ….say, Farmer in the Dell. He’s a great guy, really good with animals and has quite the repertoire of barnyard sounds. In the second box we’ll say Johnny Depp. Why Johnny Depp? He reminds me of a woodchuck. Big teeth, nice smile. Drooping whiskers. Now in the third box, we’ll put in *he says oh-so-casually* Woodie the Woodchuck.

Quit giggling over there.

Under the third box is a Add New Answer button. You can now have four choices, or five even for your guests to choose from.

Here’s what your page will look like now.

The little blue arrows on the side of the answers? You can use those to drag and drop the answers to a higher or lower position.

Now we’re going to pick a style. Use the big blue arrows to go forward and back between the 20+ styles polldaddy has.

Underneath it lets you choose wide (if you’re inserting it into a post) medium (for a small section of your post) and narrow (for a sidebar)

On the right hand side of your screen, you’ll notice these settings

The top one lets you show the results to the voters – after they’ve voted of course – or hide all the vote results or show a percentage.

The middle one I always choose block by cookie – or someone could stack the votes. Imagine if Johnny or Raquel found out they could vote non-stop? They’d be voting on my blog Every. Single. Day. trying to become president!

The bottom one is up to you, whether you’d like to allow comments or not on your poll. If your poll is part of your blog post, you can regulate the comments there as well.

Finally, we’ll save our post.

From here you have a few more options – do you want to let people write in their own option? Put a share this button with it? Allow people to choose more than one answer?

When you’ve decided, click the Save Poll Button.

Nothing happened, right? Aww..buck up little sailor, I’ll show you what to do next!

Waaaaay at the top of your page, right under your poll question is this

If you click “Embed poll in new post” a new post is created right in front of your very eyes and all you have to do is hit publish and it’s live.
OR
you can copy the shortcode which is listed in the brackets [polldaddy ] and copy and paste that into a post you already have made.

Voila! One poll made and ready to roll out the red carpet! You can see the final results here http://www.ccspencer.wordpress.com

Hail to Chief Woodie!!!

=)