Whether you’re just getting started on creating Sporcle quizzes or are already well-published, you can always add new resources to your arsenal. We have help for every step of the way.
Must-Have Resources for Creating Sporcle Quizzes
1. Sporcle Search
When you have a great idea for a Sporcle quiz, you need to make sure you’re the first to make that idea a reality. Our search tool is the perfect resource for this. Make sure to check different keywords and possible titles to catch matching quizzes with slightly different names. A thesaurus can help you find synonyms for key words for your concept.
If the number of results is overwhelming, you can also use some of our filters to narrow your search down to quizzes that match your concept more closely. For this, the most useful filters are usually Category and Type.
2. Reliable Sources
Quizzes need data, and data needs sources. Not all sources are equally trustworthy, but it only takes a few strong go-to options to support you through a wide variety of quizzes. Some of the Sporcle staff favorites include: Baseball Reference, CIA World Factbook, Citypopulation.de, imdb, Box Office Mojo, census websites (US), Merriam Webster, Scrabble Word Finder, Disney Website.
3. Photo-editing Software
Photoshop is the most well known photo-editing software, to the point that “photoshopping” is nearly synonymous with “photo editing”. If you have access or an interest in photo editing in general, Photoshop can serve you beautifully for everything from removing logos and hints from the background of your slideshow slides to recoloring map sections, to stacking up boxes for a picture box quiz. But if you’re looking for something a little cheaper (aka free), learning to use GIMP could be an excellent option instead. For an even simpler and more customized tool, however, there’s an excellent picture box builder here.
4. Image Hosting Services
After you have your images ready to go, fully formatted and edited, you still need somewhere to put them. That’s where image hosting comes in. One of the best free image hosting services online is imgur – you don’t even need an account to use the site. If you upload more than one image at a time, just make sure to grab the link for each image separately rather than the album link. Other image hosting sites exist, and if you prefer them they work just fine with Sporcle – but make sure you stay up to date on their policies. Many quizzes were broken when Photobucket switched over to a pay service model.
5. Spreadsheet Software
If you don’t use spreadsheet software on the regular, it might sound kind of limited. But you can use something like Excel or Google spreadsheets to make works of art or solve complicated problems. When it comes to Sporcle quizzes, the main use for spreadsheet software is data-oriented. Official data from government agencies, companies, charities, or scientific organizations is often in spreadsheet form. And there’s often quite a lot of information in each document.
When you have a large amount of data from a source it can be hard to find the important patterns. The sorting and filtering options within your average spreadsheet program will make it much, much easier to turn alphabetically ordered data on the populations of the countries of the world into something like “Countries With 1% or More of the World’s Population“.
6. Sporcle Groups
Sporcle has been around for 10 years as of 2017, so our users are brilliant and experienced. Whether you’re looking for how-to advice, feedback, or even shameless quiz-promotion, they can help you out.
7. Curators and Editors
Many editors and curators are active in groups, but if you know which category you need help with, contacting them directly is a step up. Curators and editors are usually enthusiastic about getting great quizzes in their category or subcategory, so they are likely to use their knowledge of both their subject and Sporcle overall to give you great feedback and help. While we don’t necessarily suggest asking for a pick directly, it never hurts to get your quiz in front of them.
8. How-To Articles
Would you believe that you’ve already found a fantastic resource just by navigating to this article through the blog? Because you have. We have a how-to section for quiz creation on the blog under “Quiz Creation Guides” .
Here are some good places to start:
How to Create a [Classic] Quiz
How to Make a Fantastic Map Quiz
How to Create a Clickable Quiz
We also have an FAQ which answers some specific quiz creation questions.
9. Templates
Certain types of quizzes, such as map-based picture click quizzes, can be time-consuming to create/format to high degree of quality. Add in the fact that many of these quizzes use the same maps and shapes, and it seems like a lot of redundant work.
That’s where templates come in. The Copy Published Quizzes feature allows you to take some of those trickier quiz options and start with a solid pre-formatted foundation. The options at the moment include a variety of maps and picture click maps, as well as bunker, criteria, grouped answers, logic puzzles, matching, sorting gallery, variable colors in one column.
10. Youtube Channel
You might know our Youtube channel by our Pottermasters or Quiz Lab series, but we also have some excellent quiz creation content. This playlist has some content that’s similar to our other quiz creation content, but a better fit for visual/audio learners, and some unique how-tos that cover tips and tricks for different quiz types. Even the non-how-to content can give you a sense of how other people think through quizzes as they play them, which is useful insight for a creator. Subscribe and you’ll always be up to date.
Any quiz-making resources you can’t live without? Tell us about them in the comments below.