Thursday, July 24, 2014

Name Changed to Paddle Planner

Finally! MN Canoeing has changed its name to Paddle Planner. Any links or embedded maps that currently point to mncanoeing.com will automatically be redirected to paddleplanner.com. The name was changed to reflect the expansion of the site beyond Minnesota. Along with the name change, I made many other improvements and additions. Listed below are just a few of them.

Added Sylvania Wilderness
Sylvania Wilderness in Michigan has been added to the interactive map and route finder and the databases. This is the first of many additions. I plan on adding Algonquin and Woodland Caribou provincial parks, the Apostle Islands, and the St. Croix and Namekagon rivers in the near future. If there are any other areas you would like to see, let me know and I will try to get them added.

With the new area, I have also slightly altered how you get to the interactive maps on the website. There are now maps for the BWCA, the Quetico, Sylvania, and the BWCA/Quetico combined.

New Background Maps
For those familiar with maps in the former Paddlers' Campsite Database (PCD) for the Quetico, I added a background with that map. It is a satellite view that Dr. J. Archer Harris put together from some aerial images of the Quetico. It is somewhat a "false color" image, but at least it is green and blue! Also, the best part - there are no clouds! This is a vast improvement over any other satellite images I've seen of the Quetico. I made this the default view for the Quetico-Only map.

I also added some background maps from the National Map. You can look at these by changing the background map in the upper right corner of the interactive maps.

Performance Improvements and Fixes
I made various performance improvements and fixed a few bugs throughout the site. Some of the biggest improvements were in the databases (campsites, portages, lakes, etc.). They should now load and sort much faster than previously.

To switch the website to accommodate multiple paddling areas, I had to make some big changes. With big changes inevitably come bugs. If you run into any problems on the site, please let me know.

No comments:

Post a Comment