Some Features, rethink about limitationsFORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

Hello, 

first of all: Thanks for this great website. I was using GPSies over years but now it was sold and nobody knows what exactly will happen. But as the possibility to register as a new user was closed the portal will be gone now or later. That's why I was searching for another portal and PlotaRoute is - by far - the best alternative. You have a great track editor and it's one of the very rare sites where I can share my tracks without forcing my friends to register.

I'm just working on my track list to ransfer all GPSies tracks to PlotaRoute. While doing so and while experimenting with the track editor I found some issues I want to discuss. Some are feature requests. Some are worries concerning limitations for free membership. Please note that I know some requests could be much work. But I just want to suggest a few things...

- There's a limitation for the describing text of a route. I think that 2000 characters is not enough. I'd like to write about 5000 characters normally - depending on the route length. And I'd really like to read something about the routes other members share so that I can get a feeling of the route. But the most annoying thing is that there's a limit of 2000 characters in the normal track editor but a there seems to be a limit of less than that when editing the text in the route list which ends up cutting the original text. It seems that this is kind of a bug?

- I don't know why you have a limitation for route points of 2500 at all. Perhaps it's about disk space and data traffic? I think it could be a higher limit. I really think about switching to the premium account. I guess I'll do this (for other reasons and to support you). But I think this is not a good thing to limit for free members as it reduces track quality for everyone who views the route and decides to use it. Especially longer routes of about 200km or above loose quality by this limitation I think...

- I think the photo limitation is almost the same: I'd like to see some photos when browsing thorugh the routes of other members to get an idea of the landscape. Of course photos are much data and I think the problem is data traffic. But what about reducing the size limit of a single photo and allowing more photos per route for the free membership? I think a photo size of 1MB would be enough and you could save 20 photos then... I think even 10 photos would be enough - even five would be much better than two. The photo limitation is indeed one thing I would switch to premium for. And If there were a limit of five photos for free membership I'd even switch to premium. But all the tracks plotted by free members would get much nicer for me to view and enjoy - and to choose which one I'd like to go for. What I mean is that this limitation does not affect the free member alone but also any other member viewing the route.

- I'd also like to have the possibility to provide a clikable link to an external site with photos or more info about a route. Perhaps this would be a nice solution too. Perhaps one could also embedd some external photo sharing service like 23.com (having a free API). But nevertheless It would be nice to provide a link to another page too.

- Is it possible to link some routes together (with a link or something) which belong together as they are different days of one long trip?

- Wouldn't it be nice to have a iframe ready map that shows all routes of a specific member to be embedded in his own website?

- It would also be nice t have some more search criteria to find routes around one's place. Would be nice to search for routes with a specific amoutn of ascend meters or something. Would also be nice to filter routes by having a description text or photos. I think a description and some photos make a route much more attracitve to view (and choose for your own ride perhaps) than just the track...

- Did you think about translating the webiste into other languages? If so I'd love to help with a German version...

Thanks for reading. Please don't take it as criticism but as suggestion. Just some thoughts...

You're having a great webiste/tool here!

Best regards, 

Lucas Sichardt

Hi Lucas,

Welcome on board! Thanks for all this great feedback. I'll give you some responses.

Adding information about a route - like you I find it's always nice to read lots of information about a route, but the vast majority of people enter no route notes at all or very little, so it probably wouldn't be a priority for us to increase the current 2000 character limit for the Route Notes field. If you do have additional information you want to share about a route though, there is always the option of posting this as comments, which has no character limit. Comments can include links, so you would also be able to provide a link to additional or photos by doing this. Regarding the truncating bug - can you let me know which page this occurs on please and we'll look into it?

Usage limits for Standard membership - I'm afraid there is a limit to what we can provide for free, as advertising doesn't generate sufficient revenue. We do provide a lot of functionality for free that would be covered under Premium levels of service on other similar websites, and we only charge a low annual fee for our Premium membership, so we hope that people feel that we're offering good value for money.

Showing multiple related routes together- you can do this using our Route Collections feature.

Embeddable "My Routes" map - this is a nice idea. We can put this on this list to consider.

Route search - you can filter search results in the Route Finder by clicking the FILTER button in the search results panel.  There is an option here to filter by hilliness. You can't specify a range of ascents I'm afraid, but this might help to narrow things down. Adding the ability to search for keywords in Route Notes is not probably something we'd give a high priority to, given that few people add route notes. However, you can do a keyword search of the titles of routes using the Universal Search tool at the top of most pages on the site.

Translation to other languages - we don't have the skills or capacity for this, so I'm afraid it isn't something we're planning.

Thanks again for your feedback.  I hope you enjoy using the site.

John

Hello John,

thanks four your reply. It's great to have your tool for free. It's feature rich. I was just thinking a bit... Thanks for your work!

In fact I didn't see the filter option for "Max. Ascent". Sorry for that.

Concering the "truncating bug": I did create a route in the route editor and I wrote about 2400 characters. After saving it I went to "My Routes" and I used the pencil-like button in the "Edit Info" column to add some more information. But when the popup occurred it was filled with a shortened text already...

Best regards,

Lucas

Thanks for the additional information about the truncating issue.  I'm not sure how that happened, as there is a character limit on the Notes field in the route planner, so it shouldn't have been possible to type more than 2000 characters, but we'll look into it. It may be that we can increase this a bit too, as it seems tjhat our database structure does allow more than this. 

John

A multi lingual interface would be nice. I understand that you don't have the skills or capacity, but I'm sure there are plenty of international users that can supply the correct translation in their own language. In fact, there's not that much to translate, just some menu's. Big chuncks of text might even be translated sith Google Translate or some similar tool. A multi lingual interface will undoubtedly boost the site's popularity.