November 14, 2002

A website visitor wrote with some questions on how our site is managed. The answers might be useful to other visitors:

> Where did you get your maps and how did you draw the lines on there? I can
> see that some are from Expedia – how does that work?

Expedia is the easiest source. Just navigate to the map you want, choosing the largest image, then download the image to disk. There is a wealth of map data on the net, here are some 2 year old links:

http://www.expedia.com
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html
http://www.maps.com/
http://www.mapquest.com

For mark up, we do all our website development (and digital photos, digital video, etc.) on our Macs. I mostly use Graphic Converter for simple markups, Fireworks, Photoshop or DenebaCad for more complicated stuff.

> Also, out of curiosity, have your gotten a lot of junk or spam email by having
> your email address available on your website? My husband is afraid we’re going
> to get too much spam if we publish it on our website.

First, get an email address that is unique to the site (good website servers offer extensive email options, under your control). If your antispam measures fail, you can then change it.

Second, encode your address to inhibit spambot detection. I used the simplest method as it works for any browser, see
http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

That has been successful so far (your mileage may vary). For MUCH more useful info see

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam/Preventing/

Lastly, if you plan to have lots of photos, then consider how you will manage several thousand images and automagically create the webpages (and most important, to update/correct the pages automatically). Our favorite tool is iView MediaPro - used by Time magazine, National Geographic, ...

If you browse through some of the more professional websites done with iView you may get some good ideas:

http://www.iview-multimedia.com/showcase/gallery.html

For website development we use Macromedia Dreamweaver & Fireworks.

Lastly, for high quality service but low cost, consider www.kangaweb.com.au as a candidate website host - very satisfied for 3 years. Also see

http://searchenginez.com/hosting.html

for in depth advice on hosts, domain registration - sort of a swiss army knife of resorces. There may be better choices than kangaweb today, but I'm happy and don't want to chance moving to a host that goes belly up or where service levels decay.

Fair winds,
Steve
--------
> Don’t know if this is a question for Dorothy or Steve. We’re taking off
> cruising in January and I’m in the process of designing our website. I’m now
> ready to do map(s) showing our planned route, and eventually where we’ve been,
> with hotspots to pictures. I like your maps and the lines you have drawn.
> Where did you get your maps and how did you draw the lines on there? I can
> see that some are from Expedia – how does that work? Ideally, I think I’d like
> to use, mark up and “save” maps from the internet. I will not having scanning
> capability on the boat. (I have just started researching maps, but looking at
> the various website links via SSCA for ideas.)
>
> Also, out of curiosity, have your gotten a lot of junk or spam email by having
> your email address available on your website? My husband is afraid we’re going
> to get too much spam if we publish it on our website.