Hi all, I have been intelligence gathering over the past 3-4 weeks! Now I have all of my questions and all of my Images. Iam putting together a couple of quizzes (similar) Each quizz has say 20 sections and 40 questions per section (with one of four options as the answer). I have all of my questions stored in a word format - and I intended to copy and paste. For both my quizzes this may take a while but I didnt want to do all this to find I should have made the word document into a html document - so that my app would be faster (am I correct here?) I did ask previously about using a url to call on both my questions and images. Images shouldnt be a problem but for each question Il need 5 url's - seems overkill to me! Im physically off work until May 4th - and Im aiming at getting 1 app done.(The other can follow on from there in good time) Also, I have server space and I thought about doing a short website with a shopping cart and selling the apps via this means - (not involving or waiting for Apple) Does this sound wise? David, I have a feeling you'll reply to this - but basically, I dont want all of my time spent putting say 20 sections by 40 questions by 4 options and the app is too slow. Receptive to anyone who has completed quizzes as big or bigger to contact me? Thanks all

HI again... Glad to hear you've been on the trail gathering pics and data for your soon-to-be amazing quiz app. Can't wait to see it. I'm imagining a menu with 20 or so quizes to take (sections). Having 40 or so questions for each quiz is reasonable. This means you'll have 20 or so URL's, one for each quiz. Each URL will point to a text-file on your webserver that holds the questions for the appropriate quiz. Like: http://www.youdomain.com/quiz1.txt, http://www.youdomain/quiz2.txt, etc The quiz data-files on your server will not be Word or HTML, but instead plain text. Plain text has no special formatting like Word sometimes uses and it's for sure not HTML markup. Simple text file. On windows you'll make these with the Notepad program. This mean you'll be copy-pasting the data from your already long Word doc into Notepad docs and saving them as quiz1.txt, quiz2.txt, quiz3.txt, etc. I'm a bit confused about the idea of needing 5 URL's for each question? A question is 1 text question, or an image for the question (or both) and three wrong answers. This is what your questions file will look like (again, one of these for each quiz): http://www.buzztouch.com/applicationScreens/samplequestions.txt Selling Apps: You won't be able to sell iOS apps from your website. All iPhone, iPad, iPod touch apps are purchased and distributed through iTunes, only Steve Jobs can change this. Sucks but true. Speed: None of what you've described will slow down your app, this is a good approach to doing what you're describing. Start by making one quiz then going from there.

Hi David, thanks again for speedy reply. Right - I have spent ages getting stuff into word - so if I need to get into Notepad then that's fine. Ok - url's - I'm out of my comfort zone - I have server space (i have a couple of websites running on this server) I have an FTP address etc but I only know how to download my websites - I dont know how I place data - solely data their. But my further query is this: a) There is a leading question b) Then right answer 1 c) then wrong answer 2 d) Wrong answer 3 e) Wrong answer 4 So I have 5 locations per question that is, 1no. leading question, 1no right answer, 3no wrong answers - so 5 locations. David this does sound long winded. My save would be something like S5_Q2_Lead, S5_Q2_correct and then c) S5_Q2_wrong1 d) wrong2 and wrong3 ( S5=Section 5, Q2=Question 2) Can you see - there is something Im not getting my head around!! Oh yes - I am out of hospital - hip replaced - and with something like 6 weeks of freedom - so you can see I'm setting my stall out to get these apps going - Yes... Steve Jobs rang me and asked about my health, I said I'm fine Steven and thank you for your concern!!

I think we have two things to work out (It's 3:00 AM here so you won't hear from me till tomorrow ;-) a) We need to get you comfortable with PUTTING files to your website. In my absense...do a Google search for 'How to FTP Files to my Site' It's a matter of 'dragging' files from your computer to your server using an FTP software. Literally a window shows your home computer and another window shows your server. It's as easy as dragging from one to the other. So... look into this, I know you'll understand once you see it. b) How to format the quiz data. I'm not sure what you mean when you say '5 locations' - do you mean 5 parts to each question? I guess you could look at it that way. One question + 4 possible answers = 5 locations? Start by doing this: Look at the sample quiz questions file at the URL from before: http://www.buzztouch.com/applicationScreens/samplequestions.txt Save this file on your comptuer like 'myquiz1.txt' or whatever. Don't change anything, just save it. Next, assuming you figured out the FTP...see if you can upload it to your site? If you can, we are 99% there. Upload example / URL: Lets say you have a site with three folders: a) /myfolder b) /myfolder/images c) /myfolder/otherstuff When you FTP the files (drag them to your server using the FTP software), the folder you drag them into becomes part of the URL. So... if you put them in /myfolder/otherstuff the URL would become: http://www.mywebsite.com/myfolder/otherstuff/quiz1.txt I hope this make sense and hope even more than your hip is feeling better!

Hi David, Is it morning or afternoon (or even evening??) With respect to above, I have reminded myself about FTP. I have located one of my sites and now realise that the site URL brings up the site itself, but the site URL/text doc brings up a particular file I placed there called text doc. (It just so happened it was a word document called text doc.doc and when I accesed it through URL/text doc it actually asked me if I wanted to open the file or save the file!! So, I'm presuming when I point to my text doc (in Notepad) then it will automatically read the text instead of asking me if I want to open a program or save the file. I'm about to access the samplequestions.txt on BT and this may give me a clue as to your sugestions above. If all I do is to use my server to pack all of the questions and images - then as I said before, I will need a URL for the Leader question, Correct answer, 3no wrong answers - so 5 URL's. (and a possible image url) Am I still getting this bit wrong, David?

ok - Im getting somewhere. I saved some question text in NOTEPAD and put it in my webspace - great - when I pointed to it - it came up as text!!!! So now I know how to put together all of my questions and store them on my server. Now, a different query - what if the iphone is in a location of bad reception and the user tries to answer some quiz questions... wont the iphone display an error message because it cant find the data??

The questions will load the first time the quiz is taken, all of them, not just one of them. When you tap the menu-item to load the quiz the text file (quiz1.txt) will load. It holds all the questions and answers, no internet is needed 'during' the test. The phone will need internet to take a quiz the first time. After that, all questions will be cached (saved) on the phone for offline use.

but internet may be needed at the end if you want to store the scores / results and usernames etc. Right?

Yup...scoreboard requires internet.

Hi Gents, I have my work cut out with my app (20 odd sections @40 questions per section - each with 4 options) I'm on with getting all of my copy/pasting done - this is the worst part. Im placing my question on a server - but I did think there was a local scoreboard (havent looked at the back end of my app yet) I'm not looking for names against people, my quizz is for the owner/individual of the iphone to keep track as to how he is doing - do we still need internet to work an individual score at the end of each quiz? Sorry about this, just havent looked at scorebord yet. Now, in saying that, I can always get my app out and at least the individual can see on a per question basis as to wether he's correct - incorrect - this isn't a bad thing at all.