WhatsOnWhen provides customers with early access to their content during the development phase by giving access to customers to a staging server. This server, "staging.whatsonwhen.com", provides an early snapshot of code, configuration, and site builds, as well as early access to XML feeds, for customers who wish to begin early implementation of feeds.

No guarantees are made about the quality of service from staging. Staging is a preview of code in development; as such, it can be taken down by developers, may be broken for short and sometimes extended periods of time, and not all sites may be fully functional in the staging server. It may be used as a preview of early content, but customers should get the necessary information to us as soon as possible to help us move them to a live service they can use for testing.

Please keep this information in mind when building sites based on, testing with, or accessing information on our staging service.

Frequently Asked Questions About Staging

Q: When will my XML feed be visible on staging?
A: We try to get XML feeds configured on staging within 24 hours of the technical request. This is not always feasible, due to other work going on in parallel; and may be affected by ongoing work on our staging systems for other clients. The service is not a guaranteed service, and we do try to move these to the live site as early in the development process as is possible. Staging access is just a stop-gap; the service quality needed for feed development, as well as the general performance requirements, are best served by moving to the live service as quickly as is feasible. As such, we will provide a staging URL, but we ask that you provide us the necessary information to move you to a live service as quickly as possible.
Q: When will my hosted site be visible on staging?
Your sales representative and WhatsOnWhen technical staff will work with you to come up with a schedule that meets your requirements and our staff availability. We generally try to get content up onto staging as quickly as is feasibly possible for your review. Before your site can be pushed to the live servers, we will still require the DNS information from you for the live site, as well as to discuss with you any changes you wish to see on staging before go-live takes place. You must give final approval on the version on staging before we can go live.
How long will it take for my site on staging to be pushed to the live servers?
This depends on three things, really. First, whether or not your DNS has been set up, and has been given the (roughly) 24 hours it will take (on average) to propagate across the internet. Second, whether or not your site has any dependencies on code that will require QA process on our side to ensure platform stability. Third, and lastly, on our scheduling of a go-live date. Scheduling of changes to the live site is done as a part of a go-live process we run here, and your changes will be carpooled with other changes to our platform on specific go-live dates that we schedule. Your sales representative will work with you to come up with a date that meets both of our requirements.

Staging and Live URLs

Q: What is the URL for my site on staging?
A: Staging URLs are constructed and parsed automatically by our system; the URL must contain the information necessary to identify your particular cobrand, as well as the whitebrand "member" site of your site group (generally 'default' for a single-whitebrand company).
Your URL will therefore look a bit like: http://staging.whatsonwhen.com/sisp/<cobrand>/<member>/index.htm and a real example of this might be... http://staging.whatsonwhen.com/sisp/wow/services/index.htm which is the staging URL for this services documentation.
If you are a hosted site, that URL (without parameters or anything else added) will always get you to your homepage.
For an XML feed customer, your site has no content; you must use the parameter information provided in the feeds documentation to access your site.
Q: What will the URL on my live site look like?
Just like the staging URL, but with the cobrand and member information stripped out. The above URL, on the live site, is http://services.whatsonwhen.com/index.htm for example; the DNS is registered in our DNS for that name. We then configure the webserver in our application farm to respond to that name, create a logfile specific and unique to that site, and notify our application servers that they should associate that domain name with a specific customer cobrand and member when responding to requests for that website name.