How to Add a Timer to Your WordPress Quiz

Give a quiz with no time limit and people just look up the answers, so the scores stop meaning anything. Formidable Forms now lets you put a real time limit on any scored quiz with one toggle, and records exactly how long each person took to finish. Here's how to set it up.

Approximate read time: 4 minutes

A quiz time limit makes the score mean more

Run a 20-question module quiz with no time limit, and the student who knew the material in two minutes looks identical, on paper, to the one who spent twenty minutes looking up answers. There's no way to tell who actually learned anything.

Building a timer yourself usually means hiring a developer, and even then, a timer that only runs in the browser doesn't stop someone from submitting late anyway.

A real time limit matters anywhere the stakes are attached to the clock, not just the score:

• An employee compliance test needs it finished inside a set window because it's the proof of training you keep on file.
• A pre-employment skills test needs it because the hiring agency wants score and time side by side.
• A trivia contest needs it because the entire prize goes to the fastest entry that's also correct.

Turn on Time this quiz? in the Scored Quiz action and set a limit. That compliance test now finishes inside its required window on its own, with the timestamp to prove it, no developer required.

What you'll need for a timed quiz

You'll need the Quiz Maker add-on, included with a Business license or higher. The Timer lives inside the Scored Quiz form action, so start with our guide to creating a quiz in WordPress if you don't have a scored quiz set up yet.

How to add a timer to a WordPress quiz

Step 1: Activate the Quiz Maker add-on

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Formidable → Add-Ons and activate the Quiz Maker add-on (included with Business and Elite licenses, so there's nothing extra to buy if you're already on one of those licenses).

This unlocks the Scored Quiz and Quiz Outcome form actions, including the quiz timer setting.

Step 2: Open the Scored Quiz action

Go to your quiz form's Settings → Actions & Notifications and open the Scored Quiz action (add one if you haven't already).

Step 3: Turn on the Timer

Turn on Time this quiz? and enter a value in the Time Limit (seconds) field.

Step 4: Publish and test

Add the quiz to a page and open it as a visitor would. Instead of jumping straight into the questions, they'll see a start screen with a Start Quiz button, so the clock begins when they're ready, not the second the page loads.

Once they click Start, a countdown appears below the form title and runs while they work through the questions.

If the clock hits zero, the quiz submits automatically with whatever's been answered so far. A developer can also add a short grace period for slow connections, so a late-arriving answer still counts.

If the quiz taker makes a mistake and has to fix it, the clock doesn't pause. It only stops if they save their answers as a draft instead of submitting.

Where the time shows up

Every entry records how long the person took, right next to their score in the entries table. That's the part a basic timer can't give you: a confident pass and a last-second scramble finally look different, and if two people tie on score, the recorded time breaks the tie.

Give your quiz a real deadline

A time limit is what turns a quiz into a true exam. Turn on Time this quiz? in your Scored Quiz action, set a duration, and every entry from then on tells you not just what someone got right, but how long it took them to finish.

If you haven't built your quiz yet, start with our guide to creating a quiz in WordPress, then get Formidable Forms and set the clock.