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Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

hike.io

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Re: Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

#61

Post by maxerickson »

zakn wrote: post #43
bpowah wrote: post #39

I'm excited to see where this goes. You are right about the competition. There is tons of information out there, but not many are wiki and none have the responsiveness or a clean modern design yours does. Kudos on the "free and open" promise! I hate logins. Critique: - I second the suggestion to encourage contributing to OSM. Most popular hikes will be in OSM already and adding them to hike.io could be as easy as sel…

Awesome feedback. Especially the part about making the "adding an entry" part easier, it didn't dawn on me that some of that information is redundant. The reason I've been writing driving directions in a wall of text is because in a lot of cases, google doesn't map all of the forest roads required to get to the trailhead. There are some hikes, like http://hike.io/hikes/mount-rose , which do and in that case I include…

Make sure to look around a bit for different OSM tile renderings, the .org default is a little dry for outdoor stuff. This one is nicer:

https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-streets-terrain/

This site maybe doesn't have the greatest UI, but it works for exploring some of the data that is available:

http://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/en/?zoom=9&lat=40.44379&lo...

(If you click the "Routes" button in the lower right it pops up a box listing the routes near the current view)

Re: Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

#64

Post by codingdave »

Defaulting to a search by name makes no sense to me. If I already know the hike name, I probably have resource to tell me about it.

Likewise on the 'Discover' feature. If I am looking to go on a hike, seeing nice picture from 4 states away doesn't help me.

The map search is where it is at, if you get enough content in there. Right now, the content is so limited that it is not even worth discussing.

It does show promise, but I'm also not sure why I would use your site vs. any of the other dozen sites that can tell me where my local hikes are.

Re: Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

#65

Post by mason240 »

zakn wrote: post #12
quaunaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it a lot. No hikes in my area(Minneapolis), and I'm not enough of a hiking buff to know anything(though I would like to be). However, beautiful design and good functionality to it. You say no paywalls or ads- what if this takes off? Just curious what you'd resort to.

That's a problem I'd love to have. I think the best way to keep a site like this going is through donations, but honestly have no idea whether that is feasible or not.

I really don't have problem with ads. As much as I love building things, there is a definite opportunity cost that comes with spending time in front of the computer that could be spent, you know, actually hiking with my family.

The overall design looks very nice so Google adsense type ads would take away from that.

Have you thought about getting individual trails "sponsored" by a local outfitter? In the info box on the left side you could have Sponsored by Joes Outfitters with a link to their site, and it would match the rest of the text so it wouldn't even be that noticeable.

Re: Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

#66

Post by zakn »

atjoslin wrote: post #60
zakn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand the question: "Do place names show hikes in a specific radius?" Are you talking about the orange dots on the map? They correspond to a single hike. That is annoying that the map doesn't remember where you were. Seems like the best way to handle that is to store your last location in localstore.

He means if I type 'Seattle, WA' then what is the 'search radius' around Seattle that I will get for hikes?

Ah got it. At the moment, it would tell you that there are no hikes named "Seattle", since search only works on the name of the hike.

When I add support for searching by location (because this seems to be a popular request), then I think it should zoom you into the location, enough so that you could see all of Seattle. I think this can be done with google's jsapi / google maps but I'm going to have to investigate.

Re: Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

#67

Post by gms7777 »

It's a very nice looking site. Here are some ideas for future things that I would find useful at least:

- Dated reviews and pictures. This is one of the biggest things I look for when searching out hikes and haven't found a reliable site for

- Hiking buddies? I think adding an "I want to hike this" button, and having some way for people to contact each other and plan hikes would be cool and I'd definitely take advantage of it.

Re: Show HN: Free, open-source site for finding beautiful hikes

#69

Post by zakn »

ris wrote: post #58

Google maps? In 2014? For outdoors-y stuff? really ? (the site is beautifully designed though)

I'm going to be looking into OSM because of comments here. I've also looked at MapBox but last time I tried the mobile web experience was basically unusable (although Google Maps isn't great either).

Do you have other suggestions?

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