Eight months ago we brought you a Ordnance Survey map of the local mountain biking tracks, I’ve now finished work on Version 2.

New features include:

• Larger map view – The map will stretch as big as your screen goes. (Press F11 to have your browser view it full screen.)
• Routes!!! – Not many so far, but new ones aren’t to hard to add.
• ‘Services’ locations – Places that useful to MTBer visiting the area.
• Track Menu – Click to go straight to a Track.
• Other view links – As well a link to 1:25K OS map there is now a Google Map Satellite link.
• Location URL shortcuts – You can link directly to a Track, Route or Grid Reference.
• Improved IE compatibility (kind of) – The Track lines show properly, but the bottom menu doesn’t fully work, sorry.

How to use URL Shortcuts
Slightly geeky but still not too hard. The easiest is a for a grid reference, just add “?g-” then the grid reference on the end of the URL. e.g. To go to Win Hill add “?g-SK187851” (without the quotes).
For tracks add “?t-” and the track name in lower case with dashes instead of spaces.

We’d like to add more descent Routes, so let us know if you’ve got any good ones you’d like to share. If you’ve got any suggestions for improvement or new features leave a comment below. Future improvements should hopefully be; full compatibility for IE, search box for Grid Refs (maybe places & postcodes too) and easier to use URL shortcuts.

Well it’s taken me a while but we have an interactive Ordnance Survey map in the Tracks page showing the track locations and links to the relevant pages. View the map

Operation & Features – You can operate it by using the buttons in the top left, or click and drag with your mouse to pan and use the scroll wheel to zoom (while the cursor is over the map). Below the map a 6-figure grid reference of cursors current (or last) position is shown. Since the map zoom level can only go to 1:50,000 (1:50K), there is a link to open an OS Get-a-map(^TM) 1:25,000 (1:25K) using the Grid Reference from the centre of the map (that’s more detailed scale). On the map you should see red circles, these show the top of a track and clicking on them brings up small info note with a link to our Track page for it, two preview pictures and its ratings.

Limitations (Enter IE) – Having overcome many problems and ‘puzzling and puzzling ’til my puzzler was sore’, I finally got it working and then got it into the main part of the site (which was almost twice the work again). It works great in Firefox2, Firefox3 brings up a message about rendering (that one’s nothing to do with me) but should work fine, Internet Explorer 7 seems to show the map but not the red markers or route lines – UNLUCKY! – for now…
I have limited the map area to the Peak District, and the map system can only zoom to 1:50,000 (that’s the maps with red coloured rights of way), I also note more out dated than the 1:25K not showing some permissive bridleways and there’s no Open Access land.

Future Plans

• It wouldn’t be that hard to show a ride route and calculate the length automatically, so we’ll probably use it for showing the route when we plan a ride.
• Having a box to enter a grid reference would be useful and shouldn’t be too hard.
• It would cool to integrate the Google maps aerial view into the map.
• Letting members use it to post routes is potentially possible, but probably a long way off and there are already sites for that purpose using the same map technology.
• Write more Track pages so we can put more on the map!

How It Works – I didn’t write the map code, it uses the OS Openspace API which is a bit like Google maps, but it’s an OS map so it’s actually useful outside a town. It displays 9 tiles (map images) at a time (there is a limit to the number a site can use in a day) and it use Javascript.

A short tech guide to using OS Openspace in WordPress
I created a html version first from the examples on the OS Openspace site and got it working in that first. When I had markers with popups and then added lines I found the popups stopped working, this was because some of the examples are wrong eg:
var vectorLayer = new OpenLayers.Layer.Vector("Vector Layer");
osMap.addLayer(vectorLayer);
Since a vector layer has already created by default, it should be:
var vectorLayer = osMap.getVectorLayer();
For getting it into WordPress (which doesn’t like Javascript in posts and pages) I have the javascript in an external file and am calling it for one page using this method. Don’t forget to call the main OS hosted script first (using YOUR access key). But the call to main initialisation function has to come after the Map Div otherwise the it won’t see the Map Div. Using the Error Console in Firefox can help a lot with fault finding the problems. I got the very handy code for converting between 6 figure grid references from this well made map page.

The Jacob’s ladder track page is now up here and there is also a full helmet camera run available for download.

The helmet camera is me following Tim (Tarquin), let us know what you think.
08-05-19 Jacobs Ladder Headcam MID

I’ve change the addresses of the pages and posts, eg the their ID number that is shown in the URL address ie http://monkeyspoon.com/?page_id=50. This means old pages and posts will now have their previous URLs, so links from other sites to the video page will now work correctly. I also moved new post IDs to better position so they follow on from the old posts. This does however mean that Recent Comments in the Sidebar will only show comments from now on. But apart from that it all seems good and working (I hope).

But let us know if you experiencing any links not working. Leave a comment here with the Target URL (right click the link and do Copy Link), and the Source Location URL, eg the page you where in at the time (that’ll be in the address bar up top). Thanks.

Other recent features include addition of the Videos and Links pages, and the Subscribe to Comments options, can also edit any comment make for five minutes after you make it. The comment posting system now uses ‘AJAX’ so it doesn’t refresh the whole page, it just adds the comment on the bottom. There is also a spell checker option. There are now buttons for formatting the comment text and adding links and images too (make sure any image you link in not wider than 640 pixels tho), and remember any style tag button you have to click it where you want the format to stop.

I’ve also added the for Users to have an Avatar, you may remember this from the old site version, but this time round I’ve done a proper Admin pager for it (along with some other boring code improvements), which you will find in your Profile page, up the top the LCA Uploader tab. Once you’ve uploaded your picture it will be displayed next to your comments. I’ve had to customise this plugin a LOT so let me know if you have problems or error messages.

Sorry for the site down time over the last couple of weeks, an unforeseen set of events meant we lost the database that runs Monkeyspoon. So simply put we lost all posts, pages and comments, so myself and Jeff have been working hard to get the site back up and running. We have got a fresh new look which we hope you like, and over the next couple of weeks we will be getting all of the features back up and running so make sure you check back. We will also be putting some of best old posts and pictures back up.

Unfortunately because everything was lost you will need to register again, you can do this here.

Please let us know what you think to the new theme, why not leave a comment below and Happy New Year to you all bring on riding 08