Free Hosted Leaderboard Service?
May 26, 2013 12:00 AM
Does anyone know of a free, hosted online leaderboard service? I have a summary activity (game) in my Lectora e-course and I'd like for learners to be able to type their names (or "handles") and their game scores into a form (on the hosted site) and then see a display of the results of how they stack up against everyone else who's already entered their info into the leaderboard. (And, as with all leaderboards, I'd like them to see the list arranged from high score to low score.)
In the absence of this, the closest idea I could come up with was to add a forum "topic" on our company's collaboration site and have people post their scores under that, but that approach wouldn't be able to dynamically rearrange the posts based on the score. (I guess the plus side of this approach, though, is it allows people to be a little more "social" -- they can post a reply to congratulate someone on a good score, etc.)
Discussion (8)
Unfortunately, not. But it's a couple of days of work to write it and deploy to a free-tier AWS server.
Why not use Google Docs?
You could have the score feed into a spredsheet there and then pull the data back out to display on your site.
@Rhys 50679 wrote:
Why not use Google Docs?
You could have the score feed into a spredsheet there and then pull the data back out to display on your site.
Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, however, my company blocks Google Docs (and cloud doc-sharing sites like it). But if I could use it, how would I send the data to it and pull it back sorted through Lectora?
I was thinking of using a spreadsheet on our company's Sharepoint site, but I foresaw a few big obstacles -- 1) it would launch the Excel doc in read-only mode (it seems to do that anytime you open a doc without going through the Sharepoint interface and specifically selecting "check out"; 2) I didn't know how to get it to display an entry "form" and then display the resulting, sorted, leaderboard view; 3) If it could be automatically checked out, I didn't know how to get it to automatically save with the new score and check back in. That why I figured if I could find a leaderboard hosting site, I wouldn't have to worry about all of that. I'm surprised that one doesn't seem to exist -- seems like something lots of folks could use for various purposes!
@tecocat 50681 wrote:
Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, however, my company blocks Google Docs (and cloud doc-sharing sites like it). But if I could use it, how would I send the data to it and pull it back sorted through Lectora?
I was thinking of using a spreadsheet on our company's Sharepoint site, but I foresaw a few big obstacles -- 1) it would launch the Excel doc in read-only mode (it seems to do that anytime you open a doc without going through the Sharepoint interface and specifically selecting "check out"; 2) I didn't know how to get it to display an entry "form" and then display the resulting, sorted, leaderboard view; 3) If it could be automatically checked out, I didn't know how to get it to automatically save with the new score and check back in. That why I figured if I could find a leaderboard hosting site, I wouldn't have to worry about all of that. I'm surprised that one doesn't seem to exist -- seems like something lots of folks could use for various purposes!
As SSNEG said there is a guide to submitting to Google Docs http://lectora.com/elearning-use-google-docs-forms
Getting the data back from Google docs to display on your site is fairly straight forward. First you make the google doc available to anyone with the link, you can do this by clicking on the Share option. Next click on Form from the tabbed options and select Embed in a Webpage. This will then give you a link you can put into Lectora to display the day directly on your page.
That is of course if your IT department would allow it.
I have no experience of using Excel on Sharepoint sites so cant help on that front sorry :(
I've used scoreoid (scoreoid.com) which is currently free - to do leader boards. There is some coding involved though...
Thanks, Rhys - I really appreciate your taking the time to explain this. If my company ever changes its security policy that blocks Google Docs, this could be very useful to know!
@hem99004 50688 wrote:
I've used scoreoid (scoreoid.com) which is currently free - to do leader boards. There is some coding involved though...
Thanks! I did find scoreoid during my searches yesterday, but got scared off by the coding stuff (which was too confusing to figure out how to make work within the very tight deadline I'm under).
I've decided to just go with a forum topic that people can post their scores to if they want...it won't be a real, sorted leaderboard, but it will at least still add a bit of a "social" element.
However, if anyone out there reading this thread does know of a free hosted leaderboard service (that doesn't require a bunch of coding to use), I'd still love to hear about it for future projects! :)
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