Welcome to the newest Disqus product, Disqus Polls. Disqus Polls will allow you to create fully customizable polls to be installed anywhere on your website, complete with reporting and analytics so that you can monitor the additional engagement from your site visitors.
Please note this is a separate product from Disqus Comments, and will require a separate subscription, or specific approval to join the Ads-Supported version of Disqus Polls. For more information on the plans that provide access to Disqus Polls, please check our “Gaining Access to Polls” section here.
Setting Up a New Poll
Once you’ve subscribed to the correct Polls plan, new polls may be created from your Polls Editor Page. You can also access this page by clicking the “Polls” option in the header of your admin and then navigating to the “Editor” option appearing in the left sidebar.
The first step of creating your new poll is adding the poll name and date range. The date range may be entered manually, or selected from a calendar view by clicking the calendar icon in the right side of the field. The poll name will not appear externally, and all of these header elements may be edited later if needed.
After adding the name and date range, you'll want to select any of the following options if they are applicable to this poll:
Require login to submit response
This will prompt login with a Disqus account before the user can submit the poll.
Allow user to take poll again
When checked, you’ll be given options to allow a user to take the poll again after 1, 7, or 30 days. This option will work even if users are not logged in.
Exclude from Universal Tag
The Universal Tag is a single set of code to be installed on your site that will allow the cycling through of all active polls that do not have “Exclude from Universal Tag” checked. Checking this option will ensure that this poll does not appear anywhere that the Universal Tag is installed.
Adding Questions and Answers
When creating new polls, we recommend always saving your poll entries. Once they are published, the user-facing elements cannot be edited in any way, and the poll will need to be recreated entirely if you wish to change any of the question or answer elements.
For each individual poll you can include a maximum of 3 questions, and each question can have up to 4 possible answers. If multiple questions are included in a single poll, the respondent will only see the poll results once they have selected answers for all questions and have clicked Submit.
For each question you can also choose how the answers will display and behave. The display and selection options will appear in the dropdown menu to the right of each question.
Single Choice - Answers will appear in the same order every time, and only one answer may be chosen
Multi-select - Answers will appear in the same order every time, but the user will be able to select multiple answers at once for this question
Single Choice Random - Only a single answer may be selected, but the answer options will appear in a different order each time the poll appears
Single Choice Random + Anchor - Only a single answer may be selected, and the answers will appear in a different order each time, aside from the last answer option, which will always appear at the bottom (and can be used for an “All of the above” answer or something similar)
Publishing Your Poll
Again, we recommend saving and reviewing polls before publishing them. Once they are published, all question and answer text and options will become fixed and uneditable.
You may also click Preview at any point to see how the poll will appear on a separate page. If you are on an Ads-Supported plan, an ad creative will appear next to the poll once it is set live, but will not be displayed on the Preview page.
Once you’ve double-checked all aspects of your poll and are ready to set it live, click the Publish button. This will lock the Poll and set it live, and the Publish button will change into a “Tags” button which can be used to copy the code block for this specific Poll for installation on your site.
Installing Polls to your Site
Once you've clicked publish and copied the tags for your poll, this will add the entire code block needed for poll installation to your clipboard. You can then go into your site code, and paste this code block within the <body> where you'd like the poll to appear. We recommend not editing this code block, as it could affect the poll's functionality.
Tags for any poll can also be copied from your Polls Editor page by clicking the computer code icon under the Actions section:
Using the Universal Tags
In addition to the poll-specific tags provided on Publish and on the Polls Editor page, we also offer a Universal Tags option. This allows you to install a single block of code to your site, which will then cycle through all active polls you have set up. All polls will be shown by installing this code, aside from polls which have expired or polls which have the "Exclude from Universal Tags" option selected.
To implement the Universal Tags, simply click the Copy Universal Tags button at the top of the Polls Editor page, and paste this code into the <body> of your site where you'd like the Polls unit to appear.
Polls Appearance
In a similar fashion to Disqus Comments, site styling will be inherited automatically. This includes the background color, and the color used for selection and the Submit button. For Ads-Supported Polls sites, the Poll unit will automatically determine whether to display the ad creative next to or below the poll, depending on the width of the container it is installed within. The module will adapt to vertical or horizontal orientation automatically.
If you're looking to modify the color used for selection and the Submit button, please see our guide to changing Link colors here.
Polls Analytics
By default, the Polls Analytics page will show an aggregate of all Polls activity on your site. To drill deeper into this data, you may select a specific poll in the dropdown at the top of the page. The graph will then chart Respondents, Impressions, and Response Rate for that Poll, so that you can see changes in engagement over time. You may group data by day or month, and then hover over any area of the graph to see the numbers for the selected period. A custom date range can be selected by clicking into the date range selector in the top right corner, and the results in your graph may be exported to CSV by clicking the Export Data button.
In addition to the engagement chart, a breakdown of the responses to each question will appear in pie charts below the graph, which will allow you to see total votes for each answer.
Gaining Access to Polls
Polls requires a separate subscription from Disqus Comments. To purchase a Polls plan as a new customer, you may select a subscription plan based on your site's monthly pageviews at our pricing page here.
If you're already using Disqus Comments, you may add a Polls subscription to your plan from your Subscription and Billing page.
Available plans are listed below.
Polls Pro (ads-free)
0-250K monthly pageviews - $9/mo (when billed annually, otherwise, $10/mo)
250k-1.5M monthly pageviews - $22/mo (when billed annually, otherwise, $25/mo)
1.5M-3M monthly pageviews - $45/mo (when billed annually, otherwise, $50/mo)
3M-10M+ monthly pageviews - $90/mo (when billed annually, otherwise, $100/mo)
Polls Business (ads-free)
The Polls Business plan offers SSO integrations, dedicated Account Management, Custom Integrations, and allows for the removal of Disqus branding. Pricing for this plan will vary by use case, so get in touch with us here for more information.
Polls Ads-Supported
This plan allows you access to the Polls feature free of charge, but will require an ads unit to be run with your poll. All sites wishing to use this plan must be reviewed and approved by our team. To submit a request for approval, please fill out our form here.