This is the repository for the UKCEH Biological Record Centre (BRC) Configurable Atlas project. The features include in version 1 of this project can be found on this page on the Minimum Viable Product.
(If you are looking for the notes around the demonstration of this project given at the BRC Recording Groups conference at Wallingford in March 2024, see this information page.)
To see an demonstration atlas created from the Configurable Atlas project, have a look at this one: https://burkmarr.github.io/middlesex-earthworms/core/main.html. The demonstration atlas was created without any coding using the instructions given below. It uses a free GitHub account with GitHub Pages to host the website - no experience of building or hosting websites is required.
This documentation is provided for site admins and the text in these pages often refers to you, i.e. the actual, or potential, site creator and administrator. Where the documentation refers to users, it means the people who will use your published atlas website.
No documentation is provided for atlas website users. It is intended that the atlas website facilities are intuitive and easy to use without instruction. If, as an admin, you feel that more documentation is required for your users, you can provide that in additional HTML or Markdown page(s) as described in the help page listed below.
The main steps to create your own configurable atlas, hosted on GitHub, from a spreadsheet of biological records are outlined below with links to documents that provide details. There are four main steps:
- Set up a GitHub repository & associated website
- Configure the appearance of your website
- Generate and upload biological record data for your website
- Add further information required for your site
Step 1 must come first, but the order in which you carry out steps 2 and 3 is not important. Step 4 is best performed after steps 2 & 3.
Setting up the GitHub side of things deals with 'forking' the BRC GitHub project repository ('repo') into your own GitHub account and then setting up 'GitHub pages' on your forked repo to create your website.
Create, add and edit the main configuration file and associated resources (e.g. a logo image) that tailors the look of your website.
Use a utility on your new site to convert a CSV of biological records into data files required by the site. This includes all the biological record data required for your site including taxon list, map and chart data. Upload these data to your GitHub repo.
Add any further configuration and files required for your site, taxon images, species accounts, web pages.