A few questions from a newbie here - I am going to start setting up a journal for an upcoming tour, hoping to tap the knowledge of you experienced folks regarding some process questions.  I looked at the setup page for creating a new journal, but realized I had a few questions before I jump in.  So then;

1.) Can you start a journal and not make it visible until you are ready?  In other words, is there a toggle such that the journal remains hidden until I'm ready to "publish" it?   I see there is a category for "Upcoming" journals - do all pre-ride-date journals just get automatically put into this category until the ride date?  

2.) I have read in this forum about embedding a map from RWGPS or Strava.  The instructions to embed a map seem easy enough - I played around on my sister's Strava account and the embed text code is easy to obtain.  But I don't have a Strava or RWGPS account - I don't really want one - is that the only way to get an interactive map into the journal?   (trying to determine if I need to get an account set up with Strava or RWGPS)

3.) I don't use a Garmin or other GPS for biking - yeah, I'm old-fashioned and just use a cycle computer and maps when I ride.  Of course my smartphone has GPS, but I only turn it on if needed so as to conserve power.  If I need Strava or RWGPS to be able to insert a map of each day's ride, do I need to buy a Garmin or other cycling GPS unit to record the ride?  Do any of you just use a smartphone to do that - I'm not even sure my smartphone battery would last all day with GPS enabled and recording.  

4.) I don't see hitcounts (page view counts) recorded on the journals - I suppose the site doesn't record that - or is there an option to do so? 

That's all I have for now - I appreciate you letting me tap into your experience to help a newbie - best wishes,

Buddy Hall

G'day Buddy

Your journal only becomes visible when you hit the toggle. Someone smarter than I will explain that.

Ride with GPS. The free version down loaded onto your phone will record your track and I have not found it to be particularly power hungry. I do not permit any other apps to track me via GPS. The pay version is better for ride planning and I have it on my home desktop. 

Hit count - AFAIK the nearest equivalent are the "likes" which readers can tag on each page and picture in those pages.

The experts wil respond in much greater detail for you.

Mike

Unlike some other sites view counts are only visible to the author from your My Cycle Blaze. Likes, on the other hand, are visible to all from the Journals page. It is a bit of a nuisance to have to flip back and forth but not a major issue. 

Being totally non technological I am afraid I cannot address any of the other issues.

Best wishes, Dodie Miller, half of the Grampies

Steve here, other half of the Grampies. 

The thing about maps to be shown in your journal is that Cycleblaze does not store the information that the map is conveying. Rather, it is only linking to the information, which is being stored by Strava or RWGPS. That implies you have to have an account with one of these.  The corollary is that if you ever delete your ride from your account in one of these two, it will vanish on Cycleblaze.  The same, by the way, applies to any Youtube you may choose to imbed.  And if the Youtube comes from your own Youtube account, it will be there as long as you keep it on Youtube. But if you link to something you happened to find on Youtube (usually a song, in my case), then it risks disappearing at the whim of whoever originally posted it.

As for using your phone to track your daily route, we use Osmand+. Osmand+ gives the option of controlling how frequently it (automatically) wakes up to have a look at where you are.  If you set for every five minutes (for example) then very little battery will be used in the effort. I forget where we ended up in choosing between accuracy and battery - you need to experiment  with it - every 5 or 10 seconds is actually a reasonable choice.  To take advantage of battery saving you would push your phone's  "home" button to send the Osmand app to the background, and then put the phone to sleep. It will then continually wake up, check, and go back to sleep.

If you do get into this with Osmand, I can give more details on how to save your GPX and ultimately upload it to RWGPS.

Hey, George.  Welcome to the site!  Looking forward to your first journal.  A couple of other points on your questions to add to the earlier replies:

1. When you create a journal, you first define its basic properties: title, author(s), start and end dates, style, banner and index images, world region, etc.  You also specify whether it is published (made visible) or not - although I think you can’t make it visible until you’ve created at least one page for it.

   

2. Once a journal has been created, you can go back and change these properties at any time, by placing the journal in edit mode from its menu page, and accessing the ‘Edit settings’ page.
3. I believe that’s right, that a journal is considered to be upcoming until its declared start date arrives.  It is still visible though in the default journal list, which lists journals in order of most recent update.  That is, if you create a journal with a future start date, it will still be visible in the journal list as soon as you publish it.
4. You can make the journal as a whole visible or not; and you can also make each individual page visible or not, from the option at the bottom of that page:

   

5. You need to establish your maps in either RideWithGPS or Strava before you can link to them, as Steve stated.  You don’t need to subscribe to RideWithGPS though - you can just register yourself using it’s free version.
6. Also, you don’t need a Garmin or phone with you to create maps, unless you want it to precisely reflect your ride as you’re riding it.  We create ours through the app using our iPads, either before the ride (so we can follow it when we take the ride)or after the fact.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Hi Buddy

As Scott wrote you can create a map either before or after your ride using the plan a ride module.

Therefore you don't really need to switch on the app on your phone while riding, just keep looking at your paper maps as I do.

Mike

T

re: #2: If you don't want to create an account with one of those services, you could create a map on another site, capture a screenshot, and then post the screenshot as an image. That would display the screenshot map and people could see your route. Voilà!

I plot my maps on Open Route Service (https://classic-maps.openrouteservice.org) then copy and paste a screenshot into my journal.  

To everyone that has replied; much thanks!  That really helps me.  Best wishes to all,

Buddy Hall

Posting a screen shot from your favourite routing app is certainly a quick and easy way to put a map into your journal. The only drawback is that the reader can not zoom in and out to get a clear picture of where in the world the route really is. 

The tool bar, such as we even have here in the Forum, makes this all super easy. (Too bad it has not been implemented in Journal comments). My personal favourite example of posting a screen shot map came as we screen shot our GPS app as we struggled to find a way out of Fucking, Austria: