Linux Open Source Software

Looking for a flexible, robust, and open-source solution to host interactive quizzes on your own website? wQuiz is a powerful, GPL-licensed quiz engine built to deliver engaging trivia and educational assessments directly to your users. Originally battle-tested on FirstAidQuiz.com, this engine is designed with a LAMP stack in mind—running seamlessly on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP—giving you a stable and scalable framework to build upon. Whether you want to create simple knowledge checks or complex, multi-stage assessments, wQuiz provides the foundational structure you need to get your content online quickly. It is an ideal starting point for developers who want a customizable platform that they can adapt and extend to meet their specific quiz-hosting needs.

wQuiz - Open Source (GPL) PHP based web quiz engine

The wQuiz program is a customisable program designed for running interactive quizzes over the Internet. The program was first designed for use on the www.firstaidquiz.com web site, but has since been made updated to make it more flexible and made available to the public.

Screen shot of wquiz in use on FirstAidQuiz.com

The quiz engine is written in PHP and designed for use on a Linux server with the Apache server, and a MySQL back-end. The quiz should work with other operating systems, web servers, and databases, but may need some changes tothe code.

The test system is based on a LAMP server with PHP 8.0.

Version 0.6.0 is now available

Updated July 2023. This includes upgrades to support PHP 8.0.

Upgrading from version 0.4.0 to 0.5.1

The new files will extract into a new directory name and should be copied over the existing files. There are no changes required to the database or configuration files. For upgrades from other versions please see the full documentation.

Documentation

The documentation is in OpenDocument Format as used by LibreOffice. They are also made available here as PDF files.

Administrator Guide

Download

License

This software is released under the GPL v3. The general principle is that you can use the software free of charge. You can also modify the source code, but any changes must also be released under the same license and be available for free.

The GPL License

History

These are some of the significant events in the development of the wQuiz program.

0.1.0 - September 1996
The first version, completely JavaScript based using a fixed set of questions.
0.2.0 - November 2003
Complete rewrite as a perl cgi program.
0.2.1 - December 2003
Multiple Quiz Option was added. Dynamic scripts were also created for generating other pages using cgi. The dynamic scripts were dropped in later versions, as the functionality was replaced on the web site with PHP.
0.2.2 - February 2005
Offline version was created, as well as the option to use different style sheets. The multiple css feature is under review and may be dropped.
0.2.7 - August 2005
HTML could now be W3C HTML compliant. Tables replaced with CSS.
0.3.0 - September 2005
Development on the new 0.3 version. The 0.3.0 version was a development stage, not used significantly. Basic Quiz Administration tools added.
0.3.1 - March 2006
Changes made to remove the dependance on the Cache::FileCache perl cpan module. This meant that the program was now suitable for running on a hosted web server where additional cpan modules were not made available.
0.3.2 - October 2006
Complete GPL release, published on the web site. Includes Quiz Adminstration tools, and all hardcoded quiz information removed. Administrator and User Guides produced.
0.4.0 - March 2012
Complete rewrite in PHP.
0.4.1 - March 2014
Minor bug fix.
0.5 - March 2019
Redesign of interface, especially admin interface.
0.5.1 - March 2022
Upgrade to support PHP 7.4
0.6.0 - July 2023
Upgrade to support PHP 8.0 with PHP version related bug fixes