Author Topic: How about embedding a map into the site?  (Read 28289 times)

Oisin

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How about embedding a map into the site?
« on: November 04, 2013, 18:02:09 »
Just a suggestion but has anyone given any thought to having a global map embedded into the site showing for instance, distribution of cars around the world, driving routes, w113 points of interest (restorers etc)?.  It would be a very interesting addition and may be useful for members to team up on a more local level.  I found this Open Source Mapping (OSM) site which allows you to set one up fairly simply (also looks pretty striaght forward to browse, add markers of where owners are, upload gsm/gpx data for routes etc). 

A free and easy to use Google Maps alternative for W113?

http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/

Oisin

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2013, 18:55:37 »
Great idea Oisin,

The German Pagode site has such a map, unfortunately only of Germany.

Perhaps the Board Members of our site here will ask you if you can do it and help out :)
DD 2011 SL 63 AMG and my 69 Pagoda 280 SL

Flyair

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #2 on: November 04, 2013, 20:18:37 »
Great idea.The only drawback is that the site proposed by Oisin is French, which, by definition is suspicious in itself ;D (Pardon, only joking...)
Stan
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Oisin

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2013, 21:01:24 »
Happy to help where I could Rolf.  I think the site admin team would be more than capable of the insertion of it in the site. The actual population of the map with peoples locations, POI's, routes etc would be down to individual members input (it looks fairly user friendly so I don't imagine that it would challenge anyone). The big question would be whether it would gain that critical mass of support to be really useful. I reckon it would - build it and they will come!

Garry

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #4 on: November 04, 2013, 21:30:15 »
There was exactly that but I have done a search and cannot find at!!!!!!! :o :o :o

Peter, Help :-[
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1969 MB 280SL 5 speed RHD SOLD.
1965 MB 230SL Auto RHD Lt Blue 334G, Top 350H, 213 Leather, Tourist Delivery.
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2005 MB A200.
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Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #5 on: November 04, 2013, 23:22:07 »
We used to have that on a service which stopped (because of lack of funds on their end).

I'm not going to investigate building this. I'll leave it to the next Board of Directors. Sorry.

Peter
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Rolf-Dieter ✝︎

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #6 on: November 05, 2013, 02:50:31 »

I'll leave it to the next Board of Directors. Sorry.

Peter, I will check with Detlef H. on the German site, perhaps I can find out what programs they used to generate the German breakdown. If it is free and only if I'll check it out. I've taken Dbase courses and written several programs then compiled them with Clipper … I found doing this facinating some 26 years ago then gave it up since I could not compeate with Bill Gates, besides my significant other keept screaming at me at the time "come to bed leave that computer alone!" LOL

Perhaps Oisin can also lend a hand (investigating what software etc).

Once we find something we can let the Board of Directors know (be it existing or future) for there review and blessing?

I like a challenge how about you Oisin? :)

Once we find something we can let the Board of Directors know (be it existing or future) for there review and blessing?

I like a challenge how about you Oisin :)
I can see it now an INDEX with 4 areas

Europe showing major countries where there are Members on this Forum

Australia and New Zealand combined

USA showing all the States

and finally Canada showing all the provinces.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2013, 02:58:49 by Rolf-Dieter »
DD 2011 SL 63 AMG and my 69 Pagoda 280 SL

Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #7 on: November 05, 2013, 09:40:16 »
Forget dBase and Clipper. First check this: http://www.sl113.org/website-docs.html

The technology used on this site is Linux, SQL, php and Javascript.

Secondly, you'll need to create a Linux based development environment where you can test all changes before committing them to the production web-site. You can't just modify the live system.

Then you use e.g. the Google Maps API (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/) to Geocode (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/) existing members addresses (for full members) or Location (or IP address) for regular members. These coordinates you store in the database, which you will need to modify.

Then finally you use the Google API to plot a map, on which you draw each geocoded address. Finally you let the user zoom in and out (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15113575/google-maps-geocoding-and-ploting-several-locations)

This is not a trivial exercise


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Oisin

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #8 on: November 05, 2013, 12:56:09 »

Thanks Rolf for your vote of confidence but I think one would need a bit more web savvy than I have.  Peter is the expert and if he is of the opinion that it would be too tricky then I would defer to him.  I would suggest however that Peter and the board review the situation periodically as the technology develops.  OpenStreetMap, an open source alternative to Google, has moved on pretty quickly in recent years and perhaps there are possibilities that did not exist the last time this was looked at?  Anyway thanks both of you for giving the subject an airing.

Rolf-Dieter ✝︎

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #9 on: November 05, 2013, 13:47:52 »
Hello Oisin,

Actually as far as member location is concerned there is the Member section. This data bank can be sorted by location. Not as good an oversight as the German data bank that includes Maps. still pretty good. One can see the membership in different areas of the world also States and Provinces in North America. The only drawback is some earlier members when they registered did not include all the location information. Peter pointed out some time back that this is now corrected, i.e. new members when they do register must fill out all location fields.

Here is the Membership area, as said you can sort by any column, quite handy that way ----> http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?action=mlist;sort=location;start=0

The German site is here, it does include the map of Germany, quite neat I think ----> http://www.pagodentreff.de/diskussionsforum/userlocator.php

Funny ting is the software used seams to come from Magdeburg, Germany (where I was born many years ago) I checked the link, appears to go to a high-school in Magdeburg.
DD 2011 SL 63 AMG and my 69 Pagoda 280 SL

Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #10 on: November 11, 2013, 15:01:05 »
Guys, here are some real maps courtesy of Google Analytics… not much you can do with this, but it does tell you where most visits to the website come from (by IP address… London and New York). This is data of the last 31 days only.



And a country list…



Peter
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Rodolfo

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #11 on: November 11, 2013, 16:39:53 »
Belgium and The Netherlands do their best comparing to their inhabitants, I see

Flyair

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #12 on: November 12, 2013, 08:06:50 »
Peter,
very interesting and instructive. I noticed that viewers from countries showing lower acquisition, such as France, New Zealand and Belgium stay longer than those with larger acquisition rate. If you want to pervert this observation, one could say that these people read slower.... ;D,

which gets me to Rodolfo's satisfaction: that Belgium and The Netherlands do their best comparing to their inhabitants.

I would risk to say that statistics can always make you happy depending on how you use it :). An argument shown as ratio of members from that given country should be more appropriate, I guess...
Stan
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2011 GL
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Rodolfo

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #13 on: November 12, 2013, 09:01:19 »
Peter,
very interesting and instructive. I noticed that viewers from countries showing lower acquisition, such as France, New Zealand and Belgium stay longer than those with larger acquisition rate. If you want to pervert this observation, one could say that these people read slower.... ;D,

which gets me to Rodolfo's satisfaction: that Belgium and The Netherlands do their best comparing to their inhabitants.

I would risk to say that statistics can always make you happy depending on how you use it :). An argument shown as ratio of members from that given country should be more appropriate, I guess...

Actually we visit more pages/minute if you look good ;-)

Rudy

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #14 on: November 12, 2013, 09:32:07 »
These are interesting statistics. The other day I was playing with the forum list and by hitting "posts" one gets the members that have posted most. The first 4 pages go from 4164 posts to 96 posts, so I guess they represent the group of people most active on the forum. Out of these 200 members, 130 are based in the US, 50 in other English speaking countries and 20 are based in non English speaking countries.  This makes it an international forum in the sense that there is more than one Nation represented, but not necessarily a global forum, as 90% of represented Nations are USA + Commonwealth. Granted, the sun was never setting over the British Empire, but still, it was not covering 90% of the planet. Which takes me back to my argument that there is a language barrier on this forum, and we are missing the contribution of many Pagoda owners from various cultural backgrounds. For example, only 1% of this most active Group is from Germany, which is clearly not representative of their share of Pagodas and of their dynamism judging by the Pagodentreffe website. France and Italy, where quite a lot of Pagodas were sold, are also vastly under-represented.  

Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #15 on: November 12, 2013, 09:51:09 »
That's absolutely correct. English language skills are the barrier to admission. And to be a global forum you'd have to assume that the Pagoda would also be distributed globally: and it just is not.  

We have around 2500 members. The system automatically deletes inactive members that have not been on the site for over a year, and have made few posts. So that number is pretty constant. As is the 10% that makes most of the posts… in fact, 20% of the membership made pretty much all of the posts. Even of the population of Full Members, i.e. those that pay, less than half have ever posted on the forum.

In our history we had a spanish language section on the forum. Despite having a Spanish board member, after about 2 years only about 10 messages were posted there. We decided to stop fooling ourselves and removed that section, back in 2007 it was, I think.

Similarly, there'd be little in it to open a German section: those who wish to discuss technical details in German have already found their way to Pagodentreff.de. Pagodentreff.de boast a much larger membership, but they do not prune inactive accounts. If you look at their active poster base, I am fairly certain you'll see similar statistics to us: 20% of the membership make the vast majority of posts (>80%), and I think that if they were to prune their members too, they'd be left with around 2500 members.

You could argue that it might be sensible to try a Spanish, French or Italian section again -- now that we are bigger. It would indeed be very easy to set-up. However, the statistics re posting would also apply to that population: only around 10% of those who sign up, will actually post on the forum.

The number of Pagoda's in France, Italy, or Spanish speaking countries is far, far less than the number in the US (the prime export market), and Germany. Even if all of these owners were members, by applying the 10% rule, you'd perhaps get a couple of posts in those languages - per month. And then we'd need someone with expertise to be able to answer these posts in that language to make it worthwhile, otherwise people will stop posting… which is exactly what happened with the Spanish forum… it just petered out to nothing.

So, my expectation is that English language skills will remain the price of admission… but with Google Translate the barrier to entry is dropping all the time. I'm sure that those hits you see from Spanish, Italian and French speaking countries use Google Translate when necessary.

The table below shows the language settings of the browser people use to access the site. It gives you some idea of their native language:



Peter
« Last Edit: November 12, 2013, 10:02:12 by Peter van Es »
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GGR

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #16 on: November 12, 2013, 10:24:23 »
That is an interesting table.

We already discussed this many times in other threads and my point is not to open sections in other languages. English is and will remain the lingua franca on this forum, by default. My point is more about an attitude which is quite aggressively commanding people to go back to English as soon as they use a few words in a different language. The effect of such attitude is quite negative on non English speakers and can make them feel they don't belong (from messages and emails I occasionally had with some members on that issue). So they end up not participating as much as they would otherwise. I realize there is a moderation issue but I still think the forum should be more tolerant to a few words exchanged in a different language, being for a joke or for a specific technical issue the person is not able to describe properly in English. After all this is an international forum, so allowing a few words in a different language here and there should not be such a problem.

Rodolfo

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #17 on: November 12, 2013, 10:34:47 »
I completely agree with Peter. (It is not because he is from the Netherlands everything he says is wrong, crf Rudy from Belgium  :D)

We should not forget that the very nature of a forum is not to find people who speak the same local European language (we can do that at the local bar), but to share information with well-populated communities. Population both in the sense of people and this specific cars.
So logics tell that it is normal that Spanish, Dutch, French, ... go to English spoken forums. This for two reasons: US has a lot of pagoda-knowledge and the English language is the de facto universal language in technology forums. Only Germany, producer and home market, can afford to have their own German speaking community and still have enough members and know how about this car in their country.

So it makes no sense to have a local forum and structure to find out we lose contact with the biggest sources of information. It would be against the fundamentals of a forum.

I also see that my answer could be in the section of the issue of regionalization.

best regards, Rudy

GGR

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #18 on: November 12, 2013, 10:47:54 »
So it makes no sense to have a local forum and structure to find out we lose contact with the biggest sources of information. It would be against the fundamentals of a forum.

I guess we cross-posted. My point is not about opening sections in other languages.

Rodolfo

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #19 on: November 12, 2013, 11:04:29 »
GGR, you are right: it is the same point of view.

Maybe we can find out if in other langauge countries the percentage of active members against total members there is lower then in English spoken countries. A small difference would be normal. But if the difference is very big, then maybe we should indeed be more forgiving if the language is a bit mixed.



PS On the other hand: I am of course aware that for instance my own English is not completely correct. But people around thius forum are nice enough here to forgive me for that, it seems. But we should encourage people who might have maybe more diffficulties in expressing in English. It would just make the forum even more nice maybe. Complicated experiment !




GGR

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #20 on: November 12, 2013, 12:02:40 »
But we should encourage people who might have maybe more diffficulties in expressing in English. It would just make the forum even more nice maybe.

Exactly!

Though the US was indeed the biggest market, I can't believe only 10% of the cars were exported in non-English speaking countries. As you say, we should proactively encourage non English speakers to participate, the forum will be a nicer and richer place. First step would be to refrain from hammering them if they use a different language than English from time to time.

Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #21 on: November 12, 2013, 13:53:46 »
My point is more about an attitude which is quite aggressively commanding people to go back to English as soon as they use a few words in a different language.

This has happened only once or twice - and quite a while back - I think, and was unintentional (the poster was afraid he was missing an explanation he was interested in). It has been discussed and should not happen again.

I have on occasion posted the occasional bit in Dutch. I don't mind a bit of multi-lingual fun...

Peter
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Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #22 on: November 12, 2013, 14:03:31 »
Maybe we can find out if in other langauge countries the percentage of active members against total members there is lower then in English spoken countries. A small difference would be normal.

One more telling thing, which I cannot yet figure out from Google Analytics (but I'll work on it), is to see what the percentage is of people posting versus just looking. Then if I can do posting analysis (versus location or language) that will tell us a bit more accurately if people feel discouraged to post.

The founder members of this group made a few important decisions to make everyone feel welcome, some of which are now under review because of the fact that the group is growing:
  • The Pagoda SL Group is not in any one country, but truly international, so that everyone from around the world can feel welcome. From the charter: Being an international organization, the Group is neither incorporated nor located in any country. ;
  • Everyone, whether you own a car or not, can become a Basic member of our group by Registering at our Forums. As a Basic member you can take part in our active Forum community and access most of the information on this site (see membership).

This inclusiveness has served us well to get us to grow to the state we are at now.

Peter
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Peter van Es

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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #23 on: November 12, 2013, 14:17:53 »
And finally, for the statistics buff: http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?action=stats

Peter
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Re: How about embedding a map into the site?
« Reply #24 on: November 12, 2013, 14:26:03 »
This has happened only once or twice - and quite a while back - I think, and was unintentional (the poster was afraid he was missing an explanation he was interested in). It has been discussed and should not happen again.

I have on occasion posted the occasional bit in Dutch. I don't mind a bit of multi-lingual fun...

Peter

All is good then.