How to code a lyrics quiz (yes I have no life)
August 17, 2006 1:16 PM Subscribe
What's the best way to code an online lyrics quiz?
This is detailed but hopefully the detail helps to find out the best way to do this.
All summer, I've been creating a list with Excel of lyrics of the 90s all in chronological order to be used as a online quiz. I'm not even quarter of the way done with it, because there is so many songs (there's 650 right now, and there is such difference between the number of lyrics for each year that I'm forcing myself to add more to equal it out, which would probably settle around 800-900).
Anyway, when this list is all said and done, I have one problem... I don't know how to code. What I want to do is this:
1) Have a account system. people would not want to do 800 lyrics at one time, so I would want them to be able to do some and then log out and come back to it.
2) Show 25 lyrics on a page at a time. This could be changed by the user.
3) Show the lyric, and have the person fill in the title and artist. I want it to be fuzzy, for example, if a person is typing in "4 non blondes" I want the page to also accept "four non blondes" "4 Non-Blondes" etc
4) There would be a point system. Each user starts with whatever points I'll make it. If they get a lyric wrong, then they lose points; right, they gain. There will also be two hints for each lyric, one for the artist, and one for the song. If they use these, they lose a little points. Each lyric will have a "check it" button to see if the guesses are correct.
5) Maybe a scoreboard.
Here's a mockup:
The gray boxes are entry fields, the "S" and "A" are hint buttons and when pressed, they show that box underneath, which can be hidden by the user.
Any advice for a non-coder to do a big project like this? Yeah, I know about rentacoder, but I am wondering how this (and if this) will work out.
This is detailed but hopefully the detail helps to find out the best way to do this.
All summer, I've been creating a list with Excel of lyrics of the 90s all in chronological order to be used as a online quiz. I'm not even quarter of the way done with it, because there is so many songs (there's 650 right now, and there is such difference between the number of lyrics for each year that I'm forcing myself to add more to equal it out, which would probably settle around 800-900).
Anyway, when this list is all said and done, I have one problem... I don't know how to code. What I want to do is this:
1) Have a account system. people would not want to do 800 lyrics at one time, so I would want them to be able to do some and then log out and come back to it.
2) Show 25 lyrics on a page at a time. This could be changed by the user.
3) Show the lyric, and have the person fill in the title and artist. I want it to be fuzzy, for example, if a person is typing in "4 non blondes" I want the page to also accept "four non blondes" "4 Non-Blondes" etc
4) There would be a point system. Each user starts with whatever points I'll make it. If they get a lyric wrong, then they lose points; right, they gain. There will also be two hints for each lyric, one for the artist, and one for the song. If they use these, they lose a little points. Each lyric will have a "check it" button to see if the guesses are correct.
5) Maybe a scoreboard.
Here's a mockup:
The gray boxes are entry fields, the "S" and "A" are hint buttons and when pressed, they show that box underneath, which can be hidden by the user.
Any advice for a non-coder to do a big project like this? Yeah, I know about rentacoder, but I am wondering how this (and if this) will work out.
Jesus Jones! Right Here Right Now!
What do I win?
Seriously, the stuff you're asking for is non-trivial, especially the "4 non blondes" bit. It would take quite a bit of time for a non-coder to create it. Even a thing like "have an account system" involves quite a bit of knowledge of things like encryption, password handling, cookies and sessions.
You might be better off using one of the many sites which let you use their quiz engine.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:29 PM on August 17, 2006
What do I win?
Seriously, the stuff you're asking for is non-trivial, especially the "4 non blondes" bit. It would take quite a bit of time for a non-coder to create it. Even a thing like "have an account system" involves quite a bit of knowledge of things like encryption, password handling, cookies and sessions.
You might be better off using one of the many sites which let you use their quiz engine.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:29 PM on August 17, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
If you're asking whether those specifications are complete enough to hand off to a contractor with the expectation that he or she would be pleased to enter into a contract based on them, and that you'd be pleased with the end result, the answer is no.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:10 PM on August 17, 2006