CommunityWalk Blog

Upgrade to Google Maps API v3

2013-08-21T09:58:00.001-07:00

We've recently completed the upgrade to Google Maps API v3. We believe the upgrade will result in better performance, but we mostly made the upgrade because Google required us to do so. If you see any problems with the upgrade please let us know.

Marker Limitations

2011-08-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

We're putting some temporary limitations on the number of markers you can add to a map. We're having trouble keeping the site stable with people creating very large maps, so for now we're limiting the number of markers on a map to 100.

Changes In Progress

2010-04-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

Over the next few days we will be making a number of changes to our infrastructure. There may be intermittent downtime while this is in progress. We hope to have everything stabilized with a few days.

We apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.

GMapCatcher

2010-03-28T21:25:00.001-07:00

We get a lot of requests from people looking to use their CommunityWalk map offline. We haven't tested this with CommunityWalk yet, but it looks like it should work for using the maps without an Internet connection:

http://code.google.com/p/gmapcatcher/

Beautiful Topography

2009-11-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

We've just enabled the "Terrain" option on all map pages. You can now see the terrain in addition to the "Map" or "Satellite" views.

IE7 Fix

2009-11-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

If you've ever received the message "Internet Explorer can not open the web page" when trying to go to CommunityWalk or bulk editing your map then you should be able to do so now.

We've finally hunted down and believe we have fixed the issue that was causing this. If you continue to see it, though, then please let us know.

Opera Support

2009-09-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

We've finally gotten around to providing support for the Opera browser (which has made dramatic leaps with regard to performance and quality). CommunityWalk should work now with Opera, but if you see any issues please let us know.

Upgraded Servers

2009-08-20T22:05:00.001-07:00

We've just completed an upgrade of CommunityWalk's servers. Hopefully we'll see some nice performance improvements from the upgrade.

Email Bug

2009-01-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

We've just discovered a bug with our email system that was preventing emails from being sent out properly. If you were missing a verification email, this is why.

The problem has been fixed and emails are being send out properly now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Performance Upgrades

2008-12-17T17:43:00.000-08:00

We will be working on some performance upgrades to the site in the coming weeks. If you notice and improvements or degradations to the performance of your map please let us know.

CommunityWalk on the IPhone

2008-08-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

I will be attending the Outside Lands concert this weekend. For those who haven't heard of it, it's a huge concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco featuring bands like Radio Head, Beck, Ben Harper, Wide Spread Panic, Drive By Truckers, and dozens others.

I also recently got a 3G IPhone with GPS so I've been looking for an easy way to take advantage of CommunityWalk with the IPhone to give me a custom map to find my way between stages at the concert.

So I created a map of the different stages:

http://www.communitywalk.com/san_francisco/ca/sf_outside_lands/map/283341

and I figured out a way to get this to show up in the Google Maps application on the IPhone so that I can take advantage of the GPS.

If you click the link below on an IPhone then the Google Maps App will open up and the search box will be prefilled with this:

http//www.communitywalk.com/xml/kml/283341

If you insert a colon after the "http" and hit search then the map will load will all of the correct markers. For some reason if you include the colon in the original url then it doesn't open the Google Maps App correctly...

Here's the link:

http://maps.google.com/?q=http//www.communitywalk.com/xml/kml/283341

So just click the link and then add a colon after the "http" and hit search.

Slightly Improved Printing

2008-07-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

We've finally gotten around to fixing a bug with printing maps where the list of locations in the print out was out of order. We've finally fixed it and made it so that they will adjust their order if you have multiple tabs selected in the map.

Explore Functionality Disabled

2008-06-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

As CommunityWalk grows we want to ensure that we give our paying customers as reliable and fast a service as we can. We've made a number of improvements to facilitate this over the past few weeks and we've temporarily disabled the explore functionality. Most of our customers display their maps on their own websites so the explore functionality was not getting much use regardless and it was the worst offender to any reliability issues we've been having so removing it shouldn't affect people too much and should help provide very fast and reliable service going forward.

Remember Me

2008-01-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

We've been so caught up in development for Wedding Mapper that we haven't been able to give CommunityWalk much attention over the last few months. So we just wanted to write to let people know that we are still going and are making sure that CommunityWalk is as stable and reliable as possible.

We also finally got around to adding in a "Remember Me" feature that will make it so that you don't have to log in to the site every time you visit. This has been the most request for some time so we hope it will make up for some of the recent neglect.

Server Migration Complete

2007-10-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, I think we are out of the thick of it. We've migrated the servers, put out more than one fire, and managed to maintain all data through out. We were worried that some data had been corrupted, but we were able to restore it with out problem.

From here on out we should be able to scale without issue. Hopefully :)

Server Migration Issues

2007-10-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

We've found an issue with our migration that took place last night. Some of the data that was imported was corrupted during the import. We need to reimport the data. This means that we will likely lose all information that was entered into the system this morning.

We are working on a way of restoring the information from this morning, but it does not look good right now. If we do lose this data then we will work with everyone affected to minimize the inconvenience this will cause.

Server Migration

2007-10-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

We are planning on migrating CommunityWalk's servers at noon today. Hopefully there will not be much downtime.

Upgrading Servers

2007-10-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

We are in the process of moving CommunityWalk to new servers where they can get more resources and hopefully provide a smoother and faster user experience. There might be some hiccups along the way so please bear with us.

In fact yesterday we had a problem with our email servers and email stopped coming through to the communitywalk.com domain. If you sent an email to us in the last 24 hours you'll need to send it again as we did not receive it. We are receiving email now, though, so it should be successful if you send it again.

Important Message

2007-09-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

We recently found a bug with our new embeddable maps that was preventing them from displaying properly on Safari. We've addressed the issue but it required changing the code snippet. So if you have a CommunityWalk map embedded on your website you'll need to get the latest code snippet from CommunityWalk and replace your existing code snippet.

Handling Growth

2007-08-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks we will be deploying CommunityWalk to a new hosting solution that we believe will give us the ability to grow indefinitely with minimal problems. Until this new solution is fully deployed and all the kinks are worked out there may be some downtime. We will do our very best to minimize this as much as possible.

Important News

2007-08-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Important: To take advantage of this new functionality you will need to replace your current CommunityWalk code snippet with the one that is now on the CommunityWalk site.

Google Searches Redirect to Your Website

We've just released an enhancement that has significant ramifications for anyone who has a CommunityWalk map embedded in another website, especially professional maps.

Now, when you have a professional map embedded in your site, if someone does a search on Google for one of your map locations, CommunityWalk will redirect them to the page on your site where the map is displayed and will make that location display on the map.

We've embedded a sample professional map above. If you were to do a search in Google and one of the results was for a location on this map it would redirect your here and select that location on this map. Try it out with this search for the Turin Airport in Italy. Click on the first result and you'll be redirected back here with the airport selected on the map above.

Change How Your Map Displays with Different Links

Now you can also change the way your map displays without touching your code snippet. If you link to a page on your website that has a CommunityWalk map embedded on it (any version, professional or free, except the free blog version), you can include instructions for the CommunityWalk map in your url. A few examples are below. They will link back to this page with the map displaying something different.

Zoomed Out, Zoomed In, In Hybrid Mode

Reviews and Ratings

2007-08-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

A while back we introduced reviews and rating into Wedding Mapper, allowing people to rate and review the venues and vendors they used in their weddings.

We've been meaning to get this into CommunityWalk for anyone who might want to rate and review things on their map, but haven't had time to get around to it, until now.

So now you can find functionality for rating and reviewing locations when you edit a location on the 'Details' tab.

Check out this example of the rated and reviewed Westfield Mall in San Francisco.

Synced Up Tabs and Legend

2007-08-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

After releasing our latest functionality that allows you to hide categories by default, we received a few requests from people that this functionality be better synced up with the list of locations. After playing around with the list a bit we realized that it really should be completely synced up with the legend.

So now when you hide a category the location list collapses to hide that category as well. And when you collapse a category on the location list it hides that category in the legend.

This feels like a better solution, so we just want to say thanks to all the great users out there for pointing out this inconsistency and helping us make the product a little better.

Thank you!

Hide Categories by Default

2007-07-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

We've had a ton of requests for this one.

You can now, finally, hide categories by default. So if you want your map to start out with one out of the twenty categories on your map displayed, simply hide all the other categories and click "Save Default View". Every time you come back the categories will still be hidden.

You can also generate links to a view of your map with only certain categories displayed. Simply hide the categories that you want hidden and then click "Link to this map". The bottom link will have instructions in the link for hiding the categories.

So give a try. From all the requests we've received for this enhancement we hope this will be a nice little win for a lot of people.

Polygons and Categories for Paths

2007-06-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

We've been getting requests for the ability to create polygons on a map for sometime now and we were finally able to find the time to complete these requests.

So you can now create polygons on your map. Check out the example below. Just create a path and then click "Options" to find a "Is a Polygon" check box. Check that and you'll immediately see your path transformed into a polygon. It's pretty cool!

Just as we were about to release this we got a request for categories on paths, so we decided to slip that in as well. Now you can categorize paths to let people know what kind of path it is or, for that matter, what kind of polygon it is!