Hi guys,

I'm working on a project for an Asian government body. As part of the project, I need to run a survey to collect some data. I was going to use a survey platform like Survey Gizmo or Qualtrics. But the government is now saying that I cannot use a platform that isn't hosted on domestic servers due to sensitive information and privacy issues. So that essentially leaves me with... nada.

So then I found out about LimeSurvey. And then I read that to install and implement it locally, I need an Apache, mySQL and PHP combo. I don't know what any of those mean or what any of those do.

Can someone ELI5 about what I'm supposed to do to get LimeSurvey set up? I'm a complete noob.

Is LimeSurvey even an appropriate solution for me? Is there something easier and better?

Thanks in advance!!

Frist of all a few things:
- Not a very good subject title. Basically everyone who is posting in the forum needs help with Limesurvey. Why else will you open a post here?
- What is ELI5?
- What you need is a hosting environment that supports Apache (a webserver software) MySQL (A database software) and PHP (a programming language). Many many hosting companies out there offer this. So you need to find a hosting company that has server in the country, for the government body to be satisfied.

What you should do is to find someone from your country that knows about webhosting, this person will probably far more helpful. Because your question is actually very little related to Limesurvey (despite it is the software you want to host), but more with webhosting in the country you are running the survey.
- I think Limesurvey is probably your best option when you need to install it on your own servers. But given that you have no idea about hosting a website or anything, you should find someone who knows. It is not a difficult to learn, but then you did not even research what "apache, mysql and php" means actually (there should be plenty of resources out there about this.

You should go with what holch already pointed out, find yourself some IT-support to set up an instance. The rest is a piece of cake.

LimeSurvey is probably your best choice. Because it is enterprise tested (LimeSurvey Pro is used by a lot of governmental organisations in Germany and France) and installable locally.

You can even start to work on our hosted platform until your local installation is ready and just transfer everting you did, because it is totally compatible.