Frequently Asked Questions about buying DATES! calendar services
- What is
DATES! ?
- Why
should I use it?
- Shouldn't DATES!
run on my own server?
- What does it cost to
use it?
- What is Hardy
Systems?
- What is the
Hardy Systems web server?
- Will
any web browser work with DATES! calendars?
- What happens to my
event data if I decide to stop using DATES! ?
 What is DATES! ?
DATES! is a web event calendaring and scheduling service. It provides event calendars to your web site for your visitors, with searching, sorting, and visitor-interaction built in.
All you do is enter events into a short web page form.
DATES! ensures that your web-posted events and schedules are always up-to-date. It gives you access to your event data in a huge variety of formats: attractive web displays, plain text for copying into a word processor, comma-separated lists, web pages formatted specifically for direct printing, and much more. All from a single, one-time-only event entry!
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Why should I use DATES! ?
Calendars and
calendar software seem to be on every major "portal" site on
the web. Many of them are free. Why should I use DATES! ?
- Event calendars
vs. personal calendars. Most of the calendar services on the
web are personal calendars. They can be used for events, but they
do not offer flexible display alternatives, let alone sorting and
searching options, let alone the ability to display your
organization's logo, let alone the ability to track who entered
what events at what date and time--all of which DATES! does
offer. DATES! is designed for organizations and events.
Personal calendaring software is not.
- Professional-looking
appearance. With free web calendars, you get a lot of
advertising and little or no opportunity to make your calendar
look like anything other than a marketing tool for somebody else's
web site--which it is, of course.
If you care about
your own organization and what it stands for, do you really want
to send your web site visitors to an events calendar full of
flashing banner ads and things that scream "My Calendar!!"?
With DATES!, you get a calendar that not only looks
professional, but more important, one that looks and acts like
a part of your own web site.
- Wide
range of display formats.*
DATES! tells web site visitors about your events in
whatever ways you choose.
- You pick the
types of calendars (monthly, list, table, etc.) for display; you
can have different types of displays on different pages.
- You pick your own
colors and use your own logo.
- You can specify
that calendars have an optional tool bar that allows users to
select dates, search the calendar, and the like, or you can
choose to keep your calendars simple in appearance and omit the
tool bar. You can do it one way for one web page and a different
way on another page.
- You can have one
web page display only certain event categories and another page
or link display different types of events. For example, you can
have one page show a calendar for only "Sports"
events, and another page show only "Concerts." And you
can have a third page that shows all events. All from the same DATES!
calendar.
- You can have your
own standard menus appear at the top or bottom of your
calendars.
- You can put DATES!
calendars inside frames.
- You can use all
of these different formats and options in whatever combinations
you want, in as many different places on your web site as you
like.
Flexibility is built into DATES! so
that your calendars are built into your web site the way you want
them!
- Ease
of use. DATES! is unbelievably easy to use. You only
need to enter event information into a simple online form. DATES!
will take care of formatting, sorting, searching, month and year
selection, and all other details. You don't need to know HTML, you
don't need to know FTP, you don't need to know web editing
programs like FrontPage or HomeSite, you don't need to convert
from word processing formats. You just need to know what your
events are--that's it and that's enough! Sign
up right now!
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DATES! runs on its own web server; shouldn't it run on mine?
- In a word, "NO."
Sure, you can install things on your own
server. But then you have to install things on your own server.
Why add to your own or your I.T. staff's burden when you don't
have to? DATES! offers you a chance to avoid installing
any software whatsoever. You can stop worrying about
configurations, stop tweaking software to fit with your own
server's peculiarities, and stop having to get approval from from
your I.T. department to do something you know you need to do and
that ought to be easy. You need events calendaring, the I.T.
department doesn't, and DATES! makes it easy. Why wait? Sign
up right now! The first month is free!!
- No maintenance
of anything. Hardy Systems maintains DATES! on its own
server, in one central place. This approach ensures that you
and your I.T. staff will have to do literally no maintenance at
all. Even better, DATES! is kept up to date with new
features added regularly--but you never need to think about it,
never need to worry whether you have the latest version, and never
have to experience the dread of new software versions causing
havoc with your existing applications.
In fact, DATES! first began use at the College of William and Mary
with version 1.0 in mid-1999.
It's now up to
version 5.5
(as of April, 2024).
Isn't
this what you've been waiting for?
Sign up right now!
You can be entering events into your calendar within 15
minutes.
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What is "Hardy Systems"?
Hardy Systems
is a sole proprietorship owned by Trotter Hardy, a law professor
by profession and a computer programmer by inclination.
More details about the company are available
here.
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What is the cost of using DATES! ?
DATES! is
available on a subscription basis, with a monthly cost that ranges
from $/month
to $/month,
depending on the service plan you select (for details on the
different service plans, please click
here).
The subscription fee is payable by credit card.
Credit card transactions are processed by Bank of America Merchant Services.
Under all plans, the first four weeks of service are free of charge.
You can sign up from the Hardy
Systems home page by choosing the "SIGN ME UP!"
link, or you can go straight to the sign-up page now by
clicking here.
Your account will be opened immediately, and you can start using DATES!
right away. And don't forget, the first four weeks of service are
absolutely free, so there's no risk at all.
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What is the "Hardy Systems web server"?
DATES! runs on a
commercial "web hosting service." A "web hosting service" is
a business that exists to provide, maintain, and support other companies' web
sites. DATES! runs on a hosting service called "ActiveHost."
Hardy Systems chose ActiveHost services because of its
24 x 7 web access and its established reputation as hosting service for a large
number of corporations and businesses.
For information on ActiveHost generally, see http://www.activehost.com.
Hardy Systems continually
evaluates the suitability and quality of its web hosting service, and reserves
the right to change to another service at any time. Any such change would be
invisible to DATES! users, however, so would require no action on your
part or that of anyone who accesses your events calendar.
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Will any web browser work with DATES! calendars?
Yes.
Different browsers make the same things look different sometimes,
so calendar information will not look exactly the same in all
browsers and all versions. More recent browsers (e.g., Netscape
4.6 and up; MS Internet explorer 4.0 and up) do a better job of
formatting the screen displays than older ones, but the
information will be available and completely legible in any
browser, in any version.
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What happens to my event data?
At any time, you can log in to the DATES! home page and obtain a copy of all your events in a machine-readable format that you can use any way you like. They're your events: if you want to incorporate them into some other software or system, go right ahead. If you ever decide to cancel your service, Hardy Systems understands and expects that you will want first to obtain this listing of your event data for your own subsequent use. (For the benefit of your technical staff: the machine-readable listing is in comma-delimited format, with a heading row. Internal quotation marks are doubled.)
*All the options specified apply to Plan 1 subscribers; other plans may have more limited features.
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