Advice for new website, please

[altyfc]

Hi everyone

I'm in the process of purchasing a .co.uk domain for an animal in Britain that's not all that plentiful.

I'm interested in setting up a website on the domain where people who get a sighting of the animal can go on, register where they saw it (preferably on a Google Map), what they saw and when they saw it, along with other details and, if available, a photograph.

Over time, I hope that the site will serve as a useful record for sightings all over the UK and that, with time, we might get an idea on how well the species is doing.

Can anyone advise on software that might be able to help with this?

Or point me in the direction of any websites that are already doing the same kind of thing for other species?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

[Dogghound]

Sorry im not of much help here, but I am intrigued what species is it?

[Paul mabbott]

The obvious recording set-up is the national one for all organisms - National Biodiversity Network Gateway

I too would be interested to know what the species is. If it is seriously rare one must consider whether it is safe to mark sightings on-line?

[altyfc]

Originally Posted by Dogghound

Sorry im not of much help here, but I am intrigued what species is it?

If you don't mind, I'll confirm that in a few days. The purchase of the domain has still yet to be completed.

[altyfc]

Thank you, Paul... unfortunately that link doesn't seem to work for me at the moment. I'll try again later.

(It is not seriously rare but is threatened.)

[Deb London]

And I don't know if it was a coincidence, but I once searched for the price of a novel domain, then decided to buy, and it had been snapped up by some oriental company that didn't use it (they are still not using it; why would they it was '.co.uk'?). Even if that was a coincidence, I think you are right to be wary.

[solus]

Would on-line mapped sightings make it even more threatened? By collectors/hunters/the merely curious? Unless of course it's some creepy crawly that might not be so attractive...

Edit: Paul's link works OK for me.

[altyfc]

That's not very nice, Deb. Just shows you can never be too sure where to do a WHOIS search.

I don't think an online map would put the creature at risk. It's well documented already as to where it can most easily be seen.

I still can't get that link to work at the moment but it may have more to do with connectivity issues at my end, I suspect, as for a brief time I couldn't get this forum to load either.

[Jim Ford]

You can set up a web site locally on your own machine, test it and then upload it to your hosting provider. It's what I did. It may seem a bit convoluted, but you can test and fiddle around with the site until it's to your satisfaction.

First I installed 'Virtualbox', which enabled me to run a virtual machine. I then installed 'Turnkey Joomla' as a VM. If you prefer 'Drupla' or 'Wordpress' there are also Turnkey versions. All the Turnkey 'Appliances' are based on Linux, but you don't need to know Linux to use them.

Having installed the software (it's all free), you can then start up the Turnkey Appliance from within Virtualbox. You'll then be given a local IP address with which you can access the web site and administer it.

These are the sites from which you can get the software:

VirtualBox
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/

I use 'Proserve' as a hosting provider. I found it easy to set up and administer. They'll also provide you with a domain name. They also were prompt and helpful with any queries I had.

ProserveUK - Professional web hosting providers

This is what I ended up with:

http://www.mausi.co.uk/

Jim

[altyfc]

I think there may be a bit of confusion here, Jim. I'm familiar with how to create basic websites and have several dedicated servers on which I can host.

More specifically, I'm wondering if there is any software out there, or any good examples to look at, where people can quickly and easily record their sightings and this can then be published to our website (probably subject to it being moderated).

The nearest I've been able to find to the kind of thing I'm looking for so far is Find & Map Sightings - Birdpost but I can't actually seem to get that to work when I double click on the map to try to submit a sighting (both in Chrome and IE).