Birdspotters
Member
Hi everyone,
Where do I start? Well, we are building a birdspotting website for Southern Africa. It's not like any of the usuals out there that gives a wealth of information on every species of birds on the planet and it's does not have a an amazing forum like birdforum.net
.
A good friend and I are taking a different approach to build this platform. We would love your feedback and maybe when we launch it, you can take a look - especially those birders in Southern Africa.
We have built a powerful journal platform that gives you full control over all your sightings as well as searching the ever growing database of other bird spotter's sightings. All summited sightings are mashed up into google maps with a heat layer that shows a great visual representation of all sightings and others sightings.
Adding a sighting:
To add a sighting, you will need to register an account on Birdspotter. We've tried to make this as easy as possible to add only the basic most crucial information required to submit a good sighting. This can be done through a simple form with a pin you can drop on the map where you saw the sighting, click Submit and that's added to the Birdspotter database and in turn your own journal. This will also be added to the Birdspotter feed on the front page where others can add comment on your sighting. If you spot and add more than one bird on a day it will group these into one post on the main feed that you can expand to show all the birds you have spotted and submitted for that day.
Your journal dashboard:
Every time you add a sighting it will get added to your journal. You can run searches of yours and others sightings from this dashboard. These searches will show you an overall visual map view of where species are predominantly located through Google maps on our website. The journal dashboard has a summary area that you can see the total number of birds you have spotted, most spotted bird species, a list of all your sightings from the most recent sighting to your first ever sighting, it will show all the sightings that others commented on so that you can go straight to those comments to reply and interact directly with those that have commented. All of this are shown on a live Google maps on the right of your journal for easy viewing.
You can edit your sightings, add notes to previous sightings and add photos of your specific sightings. You can edit these at any time.
The main search:
We have a basic search page that anyone can use and you do not need to be registered or login to query all the bird spotters additions. As more spotters add their sightings, then the more intriguing the information should prove to be. We are hoping that you will be able to use all these individual sightings to show a greater picture of where species are found.
Another addition to this platform will be the public adding of hotspots that show all the spacies that can be sighted near to the hotspot within 50-100kms radius on the map. The hot spots will also allow everyone to comment on the hot spot and confirm local species.
Where are we now:
We have already built the add sightings and search sighting engine, and are working on the main journal now. I just need to make sure as a birder you would use the platform.
What else would you like our bird spotting platform to have available? If you would like to contribute and be part of the beta website, please message me.
Look forward to your comments.
Jean
Where do I start? Well, we are building a birdspotting website for Southern Africa. It's not like any of the usuals out there that gives a wealth of information on every species of birds on the planet and it's does not have a an amazing forum like birdforum.net
.A good friend and I are taking a different approach to build this platform. We would love your feedback and maybe when we launch it, you can take a look - especially those birders in Southern Africa.
We have built a powerful journal platform that gives you full control over all your sightings as well as searching the ever growing database of other bird spotter's sightings. All summited sightings are mashed up into google maps with a heat layer that shows a great visual representation of all sightings and others sightings.
Adding a sighting:
To add a sighting, you will need to register an account on Birdspotter. We've tried to make this as easy as possible to add only the basic most crucial information required to submit a good sighting. This can be done through a simple form with a pin you can drop on the map where you saw the sighting, click Submit and that's added to the Birdspotter database and in turn your own journal. This will also be added to the Birdspotter feed on the front page where others can add comment on your sighting. If you spot and add more than one bird on a day it will group these into one post on the main feed that you can expand to show all the birds you have spotted and submitted for that day.
Your journal dashboard:
Every time you add a sighting it will get added to your journal. You can run searches of yours and others sightings from this dashboard. These searches will show you an overall visual map view of where species are predominantly located through Google maps on our website. The journal dashboard has a summary area that you can see the total number of birds you have spotted, most spotted bird species, a list of all your sightings from the most recent sighting to your first ever sighting, it will show all the sightings that others commented on so that you can go straight to those comments to reply and interact directly with those that have commented. All of this are shown on a live Google maps on the right of your journal for easy viewing.
You can edit your sightings, add notes to previous sightings and add photos of your specific sightings. You can edit these at any time.
The main search:
We have a basic search page that anyone can use and you do not need to be registered or login to query all the bird spotters additions. As more spotters add their sightings, then the more intriguing the information should prove to be. We are hoping that you will be able to use all these individual sightings to show a greater picture of where species are found.
Another addition to this platform will be the public adding of hotspots that show all the spacies that can be sighted near to the hotspot within 50-100kms radius on the map. The hot spots will also allow everyone to comment on the hot spot and confirm local species.
Where are we now:
We have already built the add sightings and search sighting engine, and are working on the main journal now. I just need to make sure as a birder you would use the platform.
What else would you like our bird spotting platform to have available? If you would like to contribute and be part of the beta website, please message me.
Look forward to your comments.
Jean
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