Software - choices..choices...

We don't have any 'off the shelf' quizzes - like a British thoroughbred racing car, we build them one at a time and by hand. Alright, perhaps that analogy is a bit of a stretch, but you get the point. So, everything in the design of a new quiz is a choice.

But remember the 'engine' in quizengine - we're not having to build everything from scratch - we just have to build a shiny colourful body to go on top of our chassis.

How we work

In practice then we'd ask you a bunch of questions that would help us 'skin' the quiz. Things like dimensions, colours, fonts, logos. Our aim is to design something that you can just drop it into your existing layouts, with virtually zero work needed at your end.

There are also a few techy type questions about the 'back end' of the server where your site is hosted. This is just to make sure that things like the 'High Score' table works properly, and you get stats about how many games are being played.

From this, we'd then build a prototype and publish it on a hidden page on this site. You get to play with it - yes, it will be a 'live' version - and let us know any tweaks or changes you want.

Questions.. questions...

Ok - that's the software that'll drive the quiz(zes) - but what about the questions and answers ? We've nearly always found that the clients - you - know best. After all, if you were running, say a online cheese shop - you'd probably be the expert on cheese and in a much better position to write the questions... That said, we are happy to research and write the questions and answers as well.

(If you want to encourage your site visitors to contribute, we know that they can often be a great source of quiz content too...)

Different ways to own

More choices. There are a couple of ways to own our software. Which one suits you best will depend on how you want to pay, the skillset of the team who maintain your website, and how often you want the quizzes to change. (We're assuming you don't just want to put one quiz up, and never change it - your visitors would find that a bit dull !)

No 1 - Pay as you go (techy translation : you get the 'object' code)

The way this works is every time you want a new quiz, you send us the questions and answers (or have us write them if we're doing that instead). We then create a quiz that can simply 'dropped' into your pages. In technical terms, this means we email you two files - an html page, and a .swf file (flash movie) that is the quiz itself. You just copy and paste that .swf file from our html page into whatever webpage you want.

That quiz is yours to keep - there are no time limits, or number of play limits (as some of our competitors do) In fact, we suggest that when you change your (daily? / weekly? / monthly?) quiz, that you move the 'old' quiz onto some sort of 'quiz archive' page - people will still come back to play them.

In financial terms, this 'pay as you go' represents a low weekly / monthly outgoing. You also have no commitments about when, or even if, you need to buy new quizzes.

No 2 - Outright purchase (techy translation : you get the 'source' code)

If you have a skilled web development team - fluent in Adobe Flash and Actionscript - it might make better sense for you to buy the software outright. This means that you only have a single payment, but can then use the 'source code' (in techy terms the Flash .fla file) to write as many quizzes as you want yourself.

This also means (again, if you have the talent in your team) you can completely re-engineer the code allowing you freedom to create different looking quizzes, or even completely new games. The only restriction in the software licence is that you are not allowed to then 'sell on' the source code to anyone else, though you are free to make runtime quizzes (.swfs) and sell them on if you want.

Naturally, outright purchase costs significantly more than 'pay as you go'. But in two circumstances it might be the best option. One - if you want to change quizzes regularly with no 'running costs'. Two - you want complete control over the software and how you develop it.

We've mentioned a couple of times about the skillset your webteam would need to 'own' the delivery of new quizzes. If you're unsure whether your team have the necessary skills, we're happy to have an open discussion with you and / or your team about what this means. We're also happy to quote for on-site training and after sales tech support.

If any of this is confusing or unclear, drop us a mail and we can help you work out which way is best for you. You'll find how to get in touch on the Contact Us page.