Installing a Self-Hosted LimeSurvey Server

0. Getting Started

At work, I occasionally get peculiar requests, like being asked to build a dedicated survey service just for someone’s department. They don’t want to use Google Forms because of some concern about privacy exposure or whatever, and they don’t want to use the general-purpose survey service we already provide either. I’m sure they have their reasons… Anyway, whenever this comes up, I just quietly build them a web page through tedious grunt work, every single time. But today, for some reason, I got a bit cranky. So I tried something I’d never done before. You don’t want to use the existing survey service, and you don’t want to use Google Forms either? Then what if I just hand you a full-featured survey service that runs on a self-hosted server? What kind of reaction would I get if I solved every single complaint?

1. The Choice

It would have been great to build a survey service entirely from scratch myself, but unfortunately my actual job kept me far too busy. So I started looking for a reasonable solution that supports self-hosting. Two candidates came up. The conclusion is LimeSurvey.

2. Installation

It’s very simple. Just do the following. The server’s OS is Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS.

1. docker pull

I got help from here.

docker pull crramirez/limesurvey

2. Writing docker-compose.yml

Since I already have another service running on port 80, I decided to assign port 8080 to LimeSurvey.

version: '2'
services:
  limesurvey:
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - mysql:/var/lib/mysql
      - upload:/app/upload
    image:
      crramirez/limesurvey:latest
volumes:
  mysql:
  upload:

3. Running

Run the Docker container from the directory where you saved the docker-compose.yml created above.

docker-compose up -d

Now if you go to http://localhost:8080 in your browser, the LimeSurvey screen should appear.

4. A Quick Setup

The LimeSurvey installation screen will appear, and you just follow what’s shown in the Usage section on DockerHub. I’ve copied it below as well.

• Database type MySQL
• Database location localhost
• Database user root*
• Database password
• Database name limesurvey #Or whatever you like
• Table prefix lime_ #Or whatever you like

3. Done

Now everything is ready. Just use it. How exciting!