Hosting solutions: two sides of the same coin

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Details: Category: Blog; 23 October 2017

5 years ago

The question at hand when committing to a software solution of the sort is therefore whether to go with a hosted or with a self-hosted software version. For those who are not familiar with software, hosting and servers, this brief article is aimed at shedding some light on hosting solutions by simplifying the subject matter. I recently dicovered a nice exemplary comparison on Patrick's Programming Blog about the difference between hosted and self-hosted solutions. What is a hosting solution? Patrick's Programming Blog describes hosting alternatives in the following manner: deciding on a hosting solution is like deciding whether to take a bus or a car. The characteristics of these two transportation systems represent the available qualities of the two different hosting options. If you decide to take a car, you have the ability to go anywhere you like at any time that pleases you. You can fully customise the design of your car on your own responsibility, for example change the colour of your body kit, decide on certain tyres and rims, choose a car with more or less storage space, mileage, horse power and technical equipment etc. This option awards you full control and scope for accommodations which is comparable to a self-hosted software solution. Basically, it means that you install, run and maintain software on your own server (if you have one) or on a server you rented from someone else. This requires time and effort; however, the benefits are substantial as it enables full design customisation, robust functionality and full data security due to a lack of server access for unauthorised parties. Bear in mind though that you have to pay for the car, parking and petrol as well as take care of maintenance and repairing. The advantages of full software hosting control also include expenditures such as paying for server capacities, installing plugins, updating the software and in general handling technical problems by yourself. As this alternative is more technically demanding, we recommend it rather be used by developers or those with extensive technical knowledge. If you decide to take the bus or any form of public transportation, it will take you where most people want it to go, thereby driving at a decent speed including automatic maintenance. There are no customisation possibilities for the bus; however, there are rules that have to be followed and in general, you have to see which bus to take to best fit your needs. The bus option refers to a hosted software solution in which software runs on somebody else’s server and any changes made to it have to take place on that somebody’s website. Flexibility and control are therefore much more limited compared to the self-hosted version. Major point of criticism is the concern about data not being located securely enough as it is stored on somebodye else's server. Nevertheless, due to a given web administration interface the setup to get started is achieved much faster and simpler from a technical standpoint with software updates executed automatically and bugs fixed by the software provider. How does this manifest itself in LimeSurvey? In the case of LimeSurvey - being open source software - also the hosted software solution allows for extensive customisation as the open source software license allows anybody to contribute in modifying the source code. Such modifications change the software product itself and are independent of the hosting options. Furthermore, the self-hosted LimeSurvey Community Edition comes with 'add-ons', i.e. premium packages that offer technical support, hugely facilitate software updates ('one-click ComfortUpdates') and other design as well as template access possibilities. Hence, typical hosted solution elements can be used when working with a self-hosted solution to make it run more smoothly. Concluding remarks As shown in the previous paragraph and unlike most other survey software companies, LimeSurvey offers great flexibility for users from the start by providing a hosted software solution as well as a self-hosted software solution. Moreover, users who prefer a hosted solution, but would also like to change things about the software using code can do so freely. As mentioned before, this is optional though. In addition, users who prefer a self-hosted solution, but are not confident running it by themselves completely, can fall back on premium add-ons to facilitate the software use. Again, these premium add-ons are fully optional, i.e. the self-hosted version can be used independently of LimeSurvey servers. For those that are concerned with data security in hosted solutions, LimeSurvey owns servers in several different countries (Germany, USA, Canada, Australia) to enable local and secure data storage. When starting to work with LimeSurvey, you can decide on a sever location of your choice. Consequently, both hosting options have their advantages and their difficulties. In the end, when deciding on one of the two solutions, it depends on your needs and skills when operating a specific software product. No worries though, LimeSurvey can be tested or fully used for free, regardless of your hosting preference.

To host or to be hosted, that is the question

LimeSurvey offers different hosting possibilities.

LimeSurvey Cloud, including free, basic, expert and enterprise survey product packages, is a hosted software version
LimeSurvey Community (Edition), including optional 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months premium package 'add-ons', is a self-hosted software version

The question at hand when committing to a software solution of the sort is therefore whether to go with a hosted or with a self-hosted software version. For those who are not familiar with software, hosting and servers, this brief article is aimed at shedding some light on hosting solutions by simplifying the subject matter.
I recently dicovered a nice exemplary comparison on Patrick's Programming Blog about the difference between hosted and self-hosted solutions.

What is a hosting solution?

Patrick's Programming Blog describes hosting alternatives in the following manner: deciding on a hosting solution is like deciding whether to take a bus or a car. The characteristics of these two transportation systems represent the available qualities of the two different hosting options.

If you decide to take a car, you have the ability to go anywhere you like at any time that pleases you. You can fully customise the design of your car on your own responsibility, for example change the colour of your body kit, decide on certain tyres and rims, choose a car with more or less storage space, mileage, horse power and technical equipment etc.

This option awards you full control and scope for accommodations which is comparable to a self-hosted software solution. Basically, it means that you install, run and maintain software on your own server (if you have one) or on a server you rented from someone else. This requires time and effort; however, the benefits are substantial as it enables full design customisation, robust functionality and full data security due to a lack of server access for unauthorised parties.

Bear in mind though that you have to pay for the car, parking and petrol as well as take care of maintenance and repairing.
The advantages of full software hosting control also include expenditures such as paying for server capacities, installing plugins, updating the software and in general handling technical problems by yourself. As this alternative is more technically demanding, we recommend it rather be used by developers or those with extensive technical knowledge.

If you decide to take the bus or any form of public transportation, it will take you where most people want it to go, thereby driving at a decent speed including automatic maintenance. There are no customisation possibilities for the bus; however, there are rules that have to be followed and in general, you have to see which bus to take to best fit your needs.

The bus option refers to a hosted software solution in which software runs on somebody else’s server and any changes made to it have to take place on that somebody’s website. Flexibility and control are therefore much more limited compared to the self-hosted version. Major point of criticism is the concern about data not being located securely enough as it is stored on somebodye else's server.

Nevertheless, due to a given web administration interface the setup to get started is achieved much faster and simpler from a technical standpoint with software updates executed automatically and bugs fixed by the software provider.

How does this manifest itself in LimeSurvey?

In the case of LimeSurvey - being open source software - also the hosted software solution allows for extensive customisation as the open source software license allows anybody to contribute in modifying the source code. Such modifications change the software product itself and are independent of the hosting options.

Furthermore, the self-hosted LimeSurvey Community Edition comes with 'add-ons', i.e. premium packages that offer technical support, hugely facilitate software updates ('one-click ComfortUpdates') and other design as well as template access possibilities. Hence, typical hosted solution elements can be used when working with a self-hosted solution to make it run more smoothly.

Concluding remarks

As shown in the previous paragraph and unlike most other survey software companies, LimeSurvey offers great flexibility for users from the start by providing a hosted software solution as well as a self-hosted software solution.

Moreover, users who prefer a hosted solution, but would also like to change things about the software using code can do so freely. As mentioned before, this is optional though.

In addition, users who prefer a self-hosted solution, but are not confident running it by themselves completely, can fall back on premium add-ons to facilitate the software use. Again, these premium add-ons are fully optional, i.e. the self-hosted version can be used independently of LimeSurvey servers.

For those that are concerned with data security in hosted solutions, LimeSurvey owns servers in several different countries (Germany, USA, Canada, Australia) to enable local and secure data storage. When starting to work with LimeSurvey, you can decide on a sever location of your choice.

Consequently, both hosting options have their advantages and their difficulties. In the end, when deciding on one of the two solutions, it depends on your needs and skills when operating a specific software product. No worries though, LimeSurvey can be tested or fully used for free, regardless of your hosting preference.

To download the RC2 of LimeSurvey 4, click here. You can also access the live RC2 release of LimeSurvey 4 here. The new question editor panel A new question editor has been implemented (based on CKEditor 5 and VueJS 2). A script editor has also been added to help users increase the complexity of their surveys by entering JavaScript, HTML or CSS code. In terms of question attributes, you will see only the general ones next to the question and help text boxes. All the other question attributes have been moved below the text boxes, being located next to the subquestion and answer option menus. Together with the live preview feature, users can now see how the edits impact the question design live. Global & group survey settings In LimeSurvey 4 you can edit the survey settings at the global and group level. The participant and publication & access settings, presentation information, and notifications can be easily set up from the global and survey group menu: The inheritance level works in the following way: Global settings -> Survey group settings -> Survey settings Any change done in one of the upper levels will immediately be inherited by the survey as long as the inheritance attribute is activated. New file management system The panel for resource management has been replaced with a file management system that provides a complete overview of the files and folders from your instance. The ability to copy and move files from one place to another has also been implemented. Data encryption Data encryption is a new feature provided in LimeSurvey 4. It has been created to help survey administrators better cope with the new data-protection regulations adopted in different parts of the world (e.g., GDPR or HIPAA). This new capability permits the encryption of personal data located in the central participant database and/or survey participants table. Moreover, you can also encrypt the data you collect from your respondents if the encryption question attribute is enabled. User management panel and user roles The user management panel has been completely redone offering you the possibility to add dummy users, as well as importing/exporting users from other LimeSurvey instances. However, the biggest news is the appearance of roles – now you can simply create roles within your organisations (e.g., students, professors, research), and easily provide user groups the same role, which in turn assigns to each user group the same set of global permissions. What is missing? At the moment, the “question themes” feature is being integrated into the GUI. It will be much easier to add customized questions into your instance - you will be no longer limited to the default question types. In the meantime, we are also working at the development of our LimeStore - a market for plugins, themes, and question themes created by our community members. For more information, access the LimeStore page. Testing and testing! We are getting closer to the release of the first stable version of LimeSurvey 4. To fasten the process, join us in testing RC2 and report the potential issues on our bugs tracker. If you have questions about LimeSurvey 4 or you just simply want to show the gratitude to the community and developers who contributed to this release, join our forum discussion topic here.

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4 years ago

LimeSurvey Authorized Partners - Get Your Lime Job Done

Did you know that you can hire a professional for survey creation or customization? Or for support? Or to generate autom ...

LimeSurvey GmbH is a growing organization that governs the development of the LimeSurvey software. Two types of packages are provided on our platform: LimeSurvey Cloud and LimeSurvey ComfortUpdate. The former provides users a hosted software solution supported by us, while the latter comes with ComfortUpdate, premium plugins, survey templates, and themes. To better understand the difference between LimeSurvey Cloud and LimeSurvey ComfortUpdate, check out our blog post on different hosting solutions for LimeSurvey. However, the growth of our user base increases the number of special requests we receive that cannot always be fulfilled by us. Therefore, we have actively started to expand the services we provide via the creation of a group of service companies that provide a wide range of optional commercial services. These services may include individual support, consulting or training, installation and maintenance of LimeSurvey on your own server, integration of LimeSurvey in your software environment, custom code development, survey creation, and the design of individual themes. Who Are Our Partners? The partners network consist of individual and organizations located all over the globe: Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, North and South America. Services & Support The services and support provided by our partners cover the following areas: Hosting: If case self-hosting is not for you, and LimeSurvey Cloud does not meet your demands, our partners can accommodate any time your individual LimeSurvey installation. Support: It covers many areas of LimeSurvey such as consulting services, and plugins. To better understand what each partner provides, visit their personal website. Training: While our manual and forum activity is high, sometimes you just need to find out about tricks and workarounds from professionals. That gives you the possibility to outperform your competition when it comes to survey implementation and analysis. Installation: Sometimes, you just wish to self-host your instance on the hosting of your organization. However, due to the existing server configuration of your organization, the installation process of LimeSurvey may need some additional tweaks. Moreover, you may also have to configure it properly in case you work with confidential data. Therefore, the possibility of hiring a professional for configuring web servers should definitely be taken into account. Integration: Automatizing workflows or the integration of LimeSurvey in the platforms used by your organization is a must-have for increased efficiency. After all, the usage of API and scripts may not be for everyone. Customization: LimeSurvey is a flexible software, feature acknowledged by everyone. With direct access to LimeSurvey developers, our partners are always informed about the development of the software, as well as about the features that will be implemented in the upcoming releases. Survey creation: Time is a scarce commodity. Not everyone has time to go through the manual and forum, and learn how to construct a survey. As a result, outsourcing this task may allow you to concentrate on more urgent things. Theme design: An eye-catching survey heavily increases the rate of completeness for your survey. Our professionals are always ready to meticulously work on the survey theme to provide you the best design possible or to create a layout in line with your corporate identity. Finding the Right Partner Now that you have an overview of the different services that can be contracted, you can start looking for the right partner for your organization. To do that, check first the list of partners list of partners from limesurvey.com, and explore the links on the left menu to find your matching partner for the service and country you are looking for. If a partner lives in the same country as you, (s)he will be displayed as featured partner on the same web page, being displayed at the top. As in any other Open Source project, the community continues to represent the most important part of LimeSurvey. However, with the growth of the project and its user base, many requests need to be fulfilled in a timely manner. Therefore, users seeking quick professional help can contact anytime LimeSurvey professionals who are eager to satisfy their project requirements anytime. We will introduce our partners on our blog in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, you may start contacting them directly or you can write us via the limesurvey.org platform support tracker.

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4 years ago

Workshop report 5/2019 - What's up with LimeSurvey 4

We are constantly improving LimeSurvey, that is why we are working on a new edition that will come up with a new redesig ...

The new question editor Starting with LimeSurvey Developer Edition 4.0.0beta1, a new question editor will be provided. It has been completely redesigned, as it was split up and not very easy to use. The new system provides a live-preview mode to help users easily edit questions, as well as subquestions and answer option in the same window. The new design is based on VueJS2 and CKEditor 5. We have also added a script field to the question editing, where you can add scripts that should be run with the question. It is automatically wrapped in the necessary on:ready functions. New text- and source editor The popup editor has been removed. We have added in exchange a pure source mode based on the ACE-editor, the same one used in our theme editor. Now it is easier to work with the source code of your questions, subquestions, question groups, and any other text edition fields in LimeSurvey. The source mode can be set to the default mode in the personal options. Global survey options With LimeSurvey 4 you are able to change your global survey options. The global options will be inherited by any survey in the system. Moreover, you can see the inherited value in the overviews. This goes the same way as the design theme options introduced in LimeSurvey 3: Global survey settings -> Survey group settings -> Survey settings Other notable changes The most important changes are hidden from sight. The database has been restructured, languages are now fully normalized, providing us the opportunity to build the foundations of a limitless survey software.The first steps to a fully modularized survey rendering are also done with this version. The question types now consist of a data renderer, a view renderer, and a twig package, making it easy to correct and fix question-related issues. We’ve added a few other extra options, like question-based encryption settings, as well as soft-mandatory question attributes. Future development We are currently removing papercuts in the newly created functionalities and recreating the functions that were available before the changes. We will also add in the upcoming weeks a way to upload and use custom question themes in LimeSurvey 4.Some parts are still not working perfectly and we are in heavy testing to find all possible edge cases. If you wish to help us, please download the beta release, test it, and report all the issues found on our bugs tracker. Join our forum discussion about the new release and stay tuned for more information about the development of LimeSurvey 4!