Difference between revisions of "How to Post a Map on the Wiki"

Revision as of 10:42, 6 February 2011

When posting maps on this wiki, its a good idea to post both the map itself, and a separate page that has metadata, and multiple versions of the map (e.g. PNG and PDF).

An example is the Elevation map for Carmel River Watershed. It has:

• [[Carmel River Watershed: Map of Elevation|A main page with meta data and links to multiple versions]
• ...

There's probably many ways to do this, but here's some ideas, starting with ArcMap:

1. Make map:
   1. From ArcMap, Print your Layout to an Adobe PDF file
      1. Set the page setup to 'Landscape'
      2. Set the printer to 'Adobe PDF'
      3. During printing:
         1. Set the output image quality to 'Normal' for a first try, but then closely examine the end product to check that it has print-quality resolution.
   2. Important: Give the PDF file a self-explanatory name for general use on the wiki, like 'CarnerosWatershed_Basemap.pdf'. You can't change filenames on the wiki once they are uploaded, so do this now.
   3. Upload your PDF file to the Wiki:
      1. Click 'Upload file' on the list of links to the left of all Wiki pages
      2. Browse to your file
      3. Click 'Upload file'
2. Create a PNG version of your map:
   1. Two ways you could do this:
      1. Open the PDF file Adobe Acrobat (you probably need more than the free version for this), and Save As PNG.
         If PNG file is larger than 2MB, shrink PNG file to less than 2MB (the current maximum file size), using something like Adobe Photoshop.
      2. Or, Save map as small PNG file (<2MB) from ArcGIS
   2. Open the PNG in an image viewer program, to check that it looks correct (e.g. the resolution is sufficient)
   3. Upload PNG to Wiki:
      1. Click 'Upload file' on the list of links to the left of all Wiki pages
      2. Browse to your file
      3. Click 'Upload file'
      4. Click 'Edit' to edit the page associated with your PNG file
      5. Below, you'll create a separate metadata page for your map, so here, you need to create a link to this metadata page.
         So, type this text in the file description:

'''For metadata and alternate versions, see: [[Carneros Watershed: Map of XYZ]]'''
where 'XYZ" is a name for your map

1. 1. Create a metadata page for your page. By either:
      1. Clicking on the link to it that you just created above (Remember, clicking on a link to a non-existent page is one way to create a page), or
      2. Searching for the name of the page you want to create, and clicking 'Create new page' when the search doesn't find that page.
   2. Build your metadata page by editing it and adding the following elements:

(See this page for an example)
(Note, you could just copy the whole example page and change the parts you need)

1. 1. 1. Show a thumbnail of your map on the metadata page:

[[Image:CarnerosWatershed_Basemap.png|200px|thumb]]

1. 1. 1. Provide download links to the actual map files, so that people can download your files and save them or print them:

* [[Media:CarnerosWatershed_Basemap.pdf|PDF file - for printing]]
* [[Media:CarnerosWatershed_Basemap.png|PNG file]]

Create a link to the PNG in your page, like this 50px. The '50px' part will tell it to automatically display a tiny 50-pixel wide thumbnail.

1. 1. 1. Note: The wiki software automatically creates thumbnails from image files like PNG and JPG (but apparently not from PDF).
   2. Copy the formatting for the links of the existing thumbnails to get a nice, titled thumbnail
2. Link from thumbnailed image back to original high-quality PDF
   1. When you click on the thumbnail, you'll be taken to the page for the full size PNG, which probably doesn't look as good as your full-size PDF. You can edit this page, and type a link to the PDF. This is not very neat. There's probably a better way. (Perhaps if you map the map in PNG first (with ArcMap), not PDF, the PNG might look as good as the PDF.)
   2. If you exported your map as a PNG directly from ArcGIS, then when you click on the thumbnail, it will open automatically to the full version PNG that is high enough resolution for screen viewing
3. Upload map:
   1. Click 'Upload file' at left of wiki window. Upload file. Format and size is limited. After you upload it, the Wiki will tell you how to link to it.
4. Link to your map:
   1. Edit the page where you want the map to be linked. Paste the link from above into the page.

Links

• How To Wiki
• Maps of the Carmel River Watershed
• Maps of the Carneros Watershed