Q: Can I get my hosted solution in the look and feel of my existing website?
A: Yes. the hosted solution will be built to your specifications and requirements; most builds have short turnaround times, and minimal construction costs.
Q: How do I provide templates?
A: Your sales representative, or the project manager, will coordinate templates and design issues with you, and keep you abreast of developments at each stage. Options include:
  • Drawings, illustrations, Photoshop artwork, storyboards, or other source information.

    When provided this way, WhatsOnWhen will specify a certain amount of design time into the build process, and work closely with you to ensure that the final look and feel matches your intent and wishes.

    In some cases, we will contract out our design services to agencies to assist in the development from early-stage storyboards into complete site designs; in other cases, we will handle design requirements in-house.

    All options will be discussed with you during the sales process, to find the fit which best matches your needs.

    If you already have a design agency, WhatsOnWhen will always be happy to work with your agency to develop the site.

  • HTML Templates and Site Specifications

    Customers who provide HTML templates and guidelines for how they would like their site implemented can request exact builds. In some cases, where requirements allow us room for interpretation, builds can take place at a much reduced cost; in other cases, where the requirements include support for accessibility or specific and difficult-to-achieve effects, cost can be much greater. We will work with you to ensure that at each step of the development process, all concerns are well communicated by both parties.

Q: How can ads be delivered on my hosted solution?
A: All ads will be delivered from our ad server; even in cases where the ad being delivered is actually an HTML fragment for an ad tag for your own ad servers. This allows us to make use of some of our features to control ad delivery and support low-cost modification to this information without incurring technical costs for occasional changes, and allow us to provide remote access to that server for customers who wish to manage their own ad campaigns.
Q: What happens if I want to change my navigation/layout/style while the site is operational?
A: There are a number of factors involved in this. Some of these are:
  • Advertising

    Ads resident in our ad server can be easily changed without a re-deploy and at little or no cost; this includes ad HTML provided for remote services; due to our unique architecture, the majority of ad-related content can be controlled through our advertising server.

    However, changes that involve either adding a "spot" or "zone" on the page for an ad to display where one does not currently appear, changes to the location of a spot/zone on the page, or changes which alter the size/shape of an existing ad will be charged and scheduled as work.

    Content-sensitive advertising (where ads are specific to the content being served on the page) and zone-based delivery are also different; changes from one type of ad delivery to the other will be scheduled into the next delivery date and will only have a cost when requested frequently or where there are a large number of ads affected.

  • Content Changes (CSS, Navigation, Etc.)

    Navigation pulled in dynamically does so automatically. Ensuring that the content on those URLs (which you provide to us) are your responsibility to ensure that they are functional. Changes to CSS, navigation, and javascript hosted on your systems are provided by you during build, and take time to coordinate and change in operational environments. Many changes will require a minimum charge of one day to orchestrate changes, pass through testing, and be rolled into a deploy on the live service; the date of that deploy must be negotiated with the project manager for your account.

    Templates, when designed, consist of two parts - determined during the development phases based on our discussions with you about the frequency and likelihood of modification during the lifetime of the site. These are:

    • The basic "frame" of a page;

      including positions of 'blocks' of content on the page, and the placement of ads, navigation, and the like, are controlled within application-integrated configuration of the page design.

      Changes to this will always result in additional cost, unless waived by project management, due to the need to schedule development time, testing, QA, and delivery to the live service.

    • Hosted Static Content;

      Whenever possible, and when content cannot be either linked to (such as CSS or JavaScript on the clients' servers) or pulled in dynamically (using our service to transparently read and cache the contents of files on the clients' servers for transparent inclusion), we will store files in a part of the filesystem which the customer himself can manage through our administration system (purchased at additional cost to the base hosted solution).

      Requests for modification to this content may result in additional cost, depending on the scope of the change.

    • Remote Static Content;

      Content linked to (such as CSS or JavaScript hosted on the clients' servers) are generally located in the core templates; as such, changes to this will likely incur cost. Clients should take care to ensure that these URLs change as infrequently as possible/feasible, either through the use of appropriate HTTP redirection (302) or URL mapping inside their web server, to provide a managed service to us.

      Content pulled in dynamically (using our service to transparently read and cache the contents of files on the clients' servers for transparent inclusion) can generally be made through a simple configuration change; the change will be scheduled for the next possible deploy with the project manager, and generally does not have a cost associated with it.

Whenever possible, we urge customers to purchase direct access to our admin system. Customers who choose not to do so should host as much of the content on their systems and site as they can reasonably support (CSS, header/footer/navigation elements, etc.) to prevent incurring costs and administration overhead of making changes to their hosted platform and branding.
Q: How do we incorporate your hosted solution into pages on our existing site?
A: Sales and technical staff will walk you through the process; however, there are three fundamental ways of incorporating our site: By taking a javascript feed, by having us build HTML components that you load into your site through iframe or remote inclusion (SSI), or by taking a full XML feed for your use. Each of these differ in price and complexity, and are discussed in more detail in the hosting section on the right-hand menu.