How do I accept my staff invitation?
When someone invites you to collaborate in SparqFest, you will receive an invitation with a 6 character invitation code if you don't already have an account with that festival. In most cases, you can simply click the “Accept Invitation” button in the email and that will guide you through the process of getting an account setup with SparqFest. You wi...
How do I access the Staff Portal?
The location of the link to access the Staff Portal varies depending on the site theme for which your SparqFest site is configured. Typically, you will find it either in the page footer or in the profile menu after you login. If the link is at the bottom of the page and you are not logged in, the site will first prompt you to login and then redirect...
No selections are showing on my site!
Go into “Settings” > “Editions” and look at the “Marketing” tab for the current edition of your festival. Is “Publicize Selections” set to “Yes”? As long as publicizing selections is enabled, the site will display all selections with enough information from their creators to be meaningful....
What are "pre-rolls"?
You have the ability to configure two different types of pre-rolls in SparqFest: one to run before every online screening block and, when configuring a screening block, one specific to that block. As the name suggests, these pre-rolls play to start out the block. First the global pre-roll (configured in “Settings” > “Editions”) will run if you ha...
Can I use my own domain for my site?
Yes. It is a $250 one-time setup fee. By default, the URL for your festival is https://[yourfestival].sparqfest.live. That URL is typically “good-enough” if you are driving people to your www site and linking from SparqFest from there. If, on the other hand, you intend to give out the SparqFest link, then you probably want it branded with your own n...
How do I delete a selection?
Go to “Programming” > “Selections” and click the selection you wish to delete as if you were going to make changes to it. At the bottom of the selection editor is a link to “Delete Permanently”. Click that link to delete the selection. You will be prompted to confirm the deletion. If you see text that says “Not Available for Deletion”, then you c...
Why does it say, "Not Available for Deletion"?
If something in the system shows the phrase “Not Available for Deletion” instead of providing a link for deleting the item, that means something else in the system must be changed first. You will see this phrase in the selection editor, for example, when a selection has nominations in the judging module or has been programmed into screenings. Before...
The dates for my festival aren't showing up properly
The public web site will display the following dates and times in the user's local timezone: Festival start/end dates Start times for virtual screenings Start times for live streams Start/end times for in-person events are shown in the venue's timezone. If you are seeing the wrong start/end date for your festival on the public site, check the follow...
Do you post to our social media accounts?
When you enter your social media accounts under the marketing tab of your festival settings, you aren't connecting us to your social media accounts. We have no special permissions just because we know your social media handles, so we could not do anything even if we wanted to. If you want us to automate some of your social media activity, you must t...
Why are strange characters appearing in titles after an import?
Character encoding issues typically occur for people managing submission information with titles in non-Latin alphabets in a spreadsheet and exporting to CSV for import into SparqFest. This problem arises from failing to export in UTF-8. Some versions of Excel and Numbers require you to specifically export your CSV as UTF-8. For more information on ...
Do you support custom site designs?
If none of our themes suits your brand or functional objectives, SparqFest can (for an additional fee): Design a custom site based on your brand and site objectives Implement the design as a SparqFest site theme that only you can use Contact our sales staff for a quote....
Where do you host our site?
We support deployment locations in France, the UK, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Singapore, and Australia. If you signed up for SparqFest before our self-service sign-up was in place, we picked a location based on your data sovereignty and audience requirements. Those who sign-up using our self-service portal pick their own hosting loc...