I have a new poll in my sidebar to the right that uses AMFPHP to read/write data to a MySQL database. The poll itself is based on an XML file. The Flex app reads the XML file and looks for the database/table that the XML file indicates. The nice thing is that if either the database or table don’t exist then the Flex app creates them.

So to make another poll all I have to do is create a new XML file and point at it. No messing around with MySQL admin and creating tables and such. Not that it’s hard but changing a few lines of XML is way easier. And in true geek manner I spent hours making the Flex app create everything from scratch rather than spend a few minutes here and there doing it manually.

The poll also stores your vote in a SharedObject so that you can only vote once. In the chart your vote choice is exploded out a bit. And as you roll over the labels in the poll results it dynamically explodes out that wedge of the chart.

If anyone has any suggestions for improvement let me know. I intend to tweak it a bit and release the code for others to use. Ultimately I think even people who have zero Flex/Actionscript experience should be able to implement this on their blog.

Oh, and don’t forget to vote.