Waypoint Wiki / Map Markups Revealed

Sorry to make you read some much

Ok, background: I tried to design Crankfire to give any given person enough confidence (information) to ride someplace new AND enjoy it. I also, on a personal level, wanted as little to do with this as possible. The site needed to be community built and self sustaining.

A big part of what makes my dream almost work is our trail maps. Users like you have been uploading GPS data and entering waypoints - plotting trail systems all over the country. Ok, well, 2 or 3 trails outside New England might not really constitute 'all over the country'. Shut it. Moving on. And that is a beautiful thing right? Well, in my mind I figure it could be beautifuller. Yeah that's right.

Here is the deal: you would pull up a map and see lines, all sorts of lines that represented "trails". But what about local knowledge like the names of trails, the difficulty level of a trail, which direction is best to ride a trail, is the trail singletrack, doubletrack?

So... once again, I ignored my list of 'winter' projects and did my own thing and created this so-called "Waypoint Wiki" thing.

Simply stated the Waypoint Wiki is the means to allow users to mark up trails with information.

Here are a couple of quick examples that might help you understand:

Here is Middlesex with some of its gravel roads marked up:
http://www.crankfire.com/map/index.php?tid=1&t=6,42,47&w=0&k=1

I wanted to label the Sessions Woods gravel hiking loop as being just that:
http://www.crankfire.com/map/index.php?tid=7&t=28&w=0&k=20

Here is where I broke myself:
http://www.crankfire.com/map/index.php?tid=26&t=64&w=0&k=6

You see?

On each map you will be able to switch on and off a whole bunch of little 15 x 15 pixels icons that represent these trail features.

Here are the icons/types we have so far (mouseover them for descriptions):

Now if you are a registered user and you are logged in, you have the power to add these little wiki points to our maps. All you have to do is doubleclick on the map where ever you want to add one. A dialogue will come up with the latitude and longitude filled in along with a few options.

Unfortunately, this is where things can get a little tricky. In this dialogue, you will see 3 tabs: Wiki, Basic and Group.

The Wiki Tab is simply the wiki layer control where you can hide, show and hilite these points on the map.

Easy enough right? Ok, on the other hand, the Basic and Group tabs represent the 2 different ways to add wiki information to the maps.

Basic Wiki's represent a quick and easy way to markup a trail with its more mundane features. Things like marking trails as doubletrack, rock gardens, difficulty, etc.. For example, I started marking up the gravel roads that cut through Middlesex. There is really nothing special about them, they don't have a hip trail name, they are just gravel roads - so I just created them a basic feature.

Group Wiki's on the other hand offer you the ability to create a linked set of wiki points. For example, take a look at the Sessions Woods Gravel Loop map link above. On that map, if you open the Wiki control panel, you will see 1 record for the "Sessions Woods Gravel Loop" - clicking it on will display the 7 wiki points that make this trail up. Sure you could just use single wiki points to name this trail, but you would have to click or mouseover each icon on the map to figure out what is what. Group wiki's can also be used to create Routes for your GPS or even to simply plan out a ride for all to see.

Get it? If not, read through the wiki help page I wrote up. Otherwise, if the help does not help and you are really lost, post your question in this thread and we can work it out: http://www.crankfire.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?p=17147

As Always...

This thing is probably not perfect. I employed some of the more 'cutting edge' web technologies out there to make this thing work. So... well... it might not work perfectly. There is a lot going on in there, so if you find any bugs, drop me a line and I will do what I can to fix it. I even will accept suggestions and comments.

Hopefully this amazing waste of time on my part will work out. Enjoy?

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