Is It Dumb To Leave Your Mark?

Hello all!

Recently I've been considering putting a guestmap on my website.
As far as I am aware, there are two companies offering free guestmaps (but with advertisements): 24fun and bravenet.

What do you all think? What is the pros/cons about the various guestmaps? I've been looking for a programming project to do for fun in my free time. Would anyone be interested in a free open-souce guestmap?

I'd appreciate any help you offer.

Thanks!

Tirian

Guestmaps are pretty cool. I havent seen any others besides Bravenets. I have put my pin on quite a few so there are a lot around. The only reason I wouldn't have one is because of the popup ads. An open source one would be very cool - you would find heaps of people would use it.

I shy away from using any addons on my sites that have popups and advertising (except for one guestbook with bravenet but thats only because i have had it with them for years now )

as i voted, what is a guestmap?

This is my friend's guestmap with Bravenet:
http://pub36.bravenet.com/guestmap/view ... 3008472248

Basically a guestmap is a play off of a gestbook.

Instead of people putting their personal remarks into a sites guestbook, they can put their mark on a map so that people that visit the site can have a visual reprensation of where the visitors are.

Does that make any sence? .

You can also head over to http://www.24fun.com/gmap/gmaptest.html to see an example of a guestmap.

Thanks for the feedback.

~ Tirian

Ok all,

I've gotten together with another programmer and we've started to program our own little guestmap that will be opensource (with no advertisements!)

version 1.0 is about ready to be released. When it is, I'll put up a link for it.

Also, version 2.0 is on its way. In this version, the zooming will be much improved over Bravenet's and you will have the option to easly import your Bravenet guest map into our new guestmap (so you won't have to start over and you won't have the 100 person cap.

We also plan to make a stand-alone version that can be used as a little diary to track trips and events.

I'd love any comments you have.

Again, the link will be posted as soon as we put the last finising touches on v1.0

~ Tirian

I'm not a big fan of either, but I do like guest maps a little better.

I would've had the same answer as Unflux but thanx for clearing matters up Tirian. Sounds like a good idea, one more way too know stuff about people.

oh ok. interesting...

Why not just use your web stats to see where they come from?

I guess it's just another way to get people to interact with your site, but
I don't think I would ever use one. Personally, I would rather have
someone type out comments for me to see, and where they come from
to my site, 95% of the time, is irrelevant.

And if you use a good guestbook script, like Bigwebmaster's, you have
the option to include a Country field. Which would of course provide
both pieces of information about the visitor.

A Guestmap is simply a tool for others to use. If it works for you, than great! If not, then that's fine too.

I'm simply endeavoring to provide a script for those who like guestmaps.

In future releases, however, it won't just be a guestmap. Hopefully we'll have a stand-alone version that you can use for personal uses.

For example: if you take a trip all over Europe, you could load up a map of Europe and mark where you went and have a little writeup about each.

Or if a group was sponsored to go down and do some relief work, they could use it to mark where they went and show the sponsors what they did.

So just take what works for you and leave what doesn't. In addition, with an open source project you could change it into whatever you want!

I understand -- good stuff

like most things, it comes down to preference.

Thanks for your interest.

By the way, that's some website you have! I've always wanted to learn flash (but I've been to cheap to buy the program)

Maybe one of these days....

Also, have you written any tutorials on flash? You really know your stuff!

~Tirian

thanks for the kind words.

I've never written any tutorials, but believe me I've followed quite a
few. I really don't know much about flash, I just know how to make it
do what I need.

The design is quite old now, and I plan to redesign soon. I hope I can
do better next time.

Tirian your a legend - cant wait to see what you guys come up with

Thanks so much four all your encouragement.
We're currently redoing our website (it is really sad in its current state) and hope to publicly release v1.0 soon.

There will be two options for users:
1) Download the code
2) Create an account and we will host it ( for those who are not web-savvy)

We're trying to make sure that no one is left out. (Hopefully our bandwidth won't run out....)

By the way, do you know of other places I could spread the word once we get it done. We want people to stop using crippled / expensive software and switch to OPEN-SOURCE!

Thanks again ~Tirian.