Community Polls
Community Polls is a polling component for Joomla 5 and 6. It is what we use ourselves whenever we want to ask visitors a quick question without sending them off to a third-party survey site.
This page is a short tour of what the component does and where to find each feature. If you want a step-by-step setup, jump to the Quick start guide.
What you can build with it
- Editorial polls placed inside articles using the content plugin shortcode, the editor button, or the Random Poll module.
- Community polls that registered users can submit from the front end. You can auto-publish them or hold them for an admin to review.
- Multi-question grid polls when one question is not enough but a full survey component would be overkill.
- Ranked-choice polls where the order of preferences matters.
- Private polls that only people with a shared link and key can vote on.
Poll types
| Type | Best for |
|---|---|
| Single choice | Pick one answer (radio buttons). |
| Multiple choice | Pick several answers (checkboxes with an optional minimum and maximum). |
| Grid | Several questions sharing the same set of answers, like a short survey. |
What is in the package
- Component — admin and site-side code, dashboard, polls manager, settings, email templates manager, audience view, and stats.
- Modules
- Random Poll — single-poll widget for any module position.
- Community Polls — listing of latest or most-voted polls.
- Categories — categories with poll counts and a glimpse of the most recent poll per category.
- Plugins
- Content plugin — adds the
{poll id=N}shortcode to articles. - Editor button — Poll picker that drops a shortcode into the editor for you.
- Smart Search — indexes polls so visitors find them through the site search.
- Privacy — covers Joomla's GDPR export and removal flow.
- Community Polls events — handles points awards, activity stream entries, and email notifications through the Shondalai Core integration.
- Content plugin — adds the
- Email templates — base wrapper plus three default fragments (new poll, new vote, moderate poll), all editable from the admin.
What is new in version 7
If you are coming from version 6, the biggest changes are:
- A new admin built as a single-page React application. The dashboard, polls list, results, audience view, settings, and email templates all share the same shell, so nothing reloads as you move between them.
- AI helpers inside the poll editor that can suggest answer options, summarise live results, and group similar free-text answers. They are off by default and only run when you click them. See AI helpers.
- File-based email templates with a built-in editor, a live HTML preview at desktop and mobile widths, and a one-click test send. See Email templates.
- New poll types — grid and ranked join the existing single and multi-choice types.
- Configurable column counts for the public polls and categories listings (Settings → Display).
- Modernised plugins — every bundled plugin has been updated to the modern Joomla 5/6 plugin pattern with proper service providers.
The full list of changes between every version is in the Changelog.
Where to go next
- New install: Quick start guide.
- Embed a poll in a Joomla article: Display polls in Joomla articles.
- Customise notification emails: Email templates.
- Extend the component with your own plugin: Plugin events.
- Hit a snag: Troubleshooting tips.