Mohamed Ellozy said:
Right now I am looking at how to organize the stuff on my site (e.g. Should the trailheads be grouped by road, as I have done, or by section of the site?). Also trying to get some consistency in the naming system. I also need to know what formats are needed, e.g. does anyone here use the TomTom navigator, which I think uses a different file format? Finally I will need some feedback as to how useful all this is, no point in doing it if nobody uses it!
agreed, I think the 3 major important aspects are
* content (scope)
* accuracy
* useability
content -- your choice as to scope.
accuracy -- I would recommend for each trailhead having 1 person record a waypoint, & another person check it to see that it works (and record the names / dates of who did both, for your own purposes).
useability -- not quite sure what to recommend. This is really key, I can't tell you how many times I've stopped browsing particular websites, even if they have good information, because the interface sucks.
re: format
GPX format is good because it seems to be the only major standard out there (and it's XML so you can do lots of easy auto-processing on it). CSV is good because it's plaintext for use with spreadsheets. I'd try to be minimalist & support as few formats as possible, unless it's easy to write a script to autoconvert from your base format. (edit: autoconversion itself is fairly easy, you can use GPSBabel, but then you have more storage space & have to integrate multiple HTML links into your website. If you have a server that can generate them on the fly, then maybe it's not so difficult.)
Something that I think would be useful would be to link into Google Maps & show the trailheads as part of your routes-to-the-peaks pages. Unfortunately I'm not yet familiar how to use their API, but I know there are lots of sites which have done it. (I may try to get familiar with it this winter; I've been attempting to automate part of my botanical data entry with a local web server & it will reduce my human-error rate if I can see on a map which waypoints I'm working with. If I learn anything interesting I'll let you know.)
Why I would use it: I know where many of the trailheads are, but if I'm planning a hike, I'd like to know where the trailhead is. If it's easy to find, I don't need a GPS waypoint, I'd just need a map. If it's not easy to find (e.g. the trailheads on Success Pond Rd) or if it would provide reassurance that I'm really heading the right way (trailheads off of the USFS dirt rds e.g. Gale River Rd or Mill Brook Rd), then a GPS waypoint would be helpful. Even the Ferncroft trailhead (and the turn to get there!) would be helpful to have GPS points.
A comment to that effect (whether trailheads are easy/hard to find) would also be helpful.
Unless you are concerned about someone "stealing" data, or the files are too large, I'd do one (or both) of two things:
(1) just put all the waypoints in 1 file
(2) on each page of your site, put a link to waypoints relevant to those hikes (whether trailhead waypoints or summit waypoints)
)
