
Update on a Side Project - johnjreiser
http://njgeo.org/2016/01/27/update-on-a-side-project/
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perlgeek
The part where the author spent many hours to work around shared hosting
really resonated with me. As a student I did the same, and some of my sites
still bare the (technical) scars.

For example I used static pages, and the included dynamic elements through
server side includes (SSI). But once you have multiple such dynamic pieces,
they can't easily interact, and it all gets very messy.

And I realized that this is a very limiting approach. I spent much more money
on other pastimes. You get a small virtual server for 5EUR/Month or less from
OVH or Digital Ocean and probably many other providers. And that's enough for
a website of mine that gets around 40k visitors per month.

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BorisMelnik
serious question - why not just get a $4.99 fully functioning VPS from digital
ocean or something?

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perlgeek
I have one now.

But for me, this was back in 2006/2007 where VPS weren't that cheap, and I was
very reluctant committing to recurring payments.

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nattaylor
This is a cool project and it's fun to read about how he built it. I would
like to see him open source it, so that people could make these for other
states. It's also nice, in my opinion, that he gets a little payout from ads
and I'm glad it's for something other than some kind of content-in-WordPress-
site. Users might see a useful ad if targeting was configured right!

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johnjreiser
The difficulty in "open sourcing" it is that each state manages its
CAMA/assessment/cadastral data differently.

I did open source some of the tools I used to work with New Jersey's data:
[https://github.com/johnjreiser/NJParcelTools](https://github.com/johnjreiser/NJParcelTools)

~~~
nattaylor
Nice! I didn't even bother to search, but I should have.

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BorisMelnik
I gotta say, this is a really cool project, I don't see how the end users
wouldn't / didn't find the maps interesting or useful. I would love to have
one of these for my areas.

Perhaps the pages they were landing on could have been better optimized so
users would view the map, or the map could be on every page.

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johnjreiser
I have added a neighborhood map to each property page, in addition to the Bing
"Bird's Eye." I'm also working on a Leaflet-based map of the whole state with
the parcel layer. Still thinking over how to handle creating the vector tiles
and linking them up to the assessment information. NJ's parcel GIS data gets
updated yearly, while the assessment/sales records are updated weekly. I don't
want to have the assessment data in the vector tiles, so I've got to perform
some matching & retrieving data after they're loaded.

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TurnipTheBeet
Thanks for sharing this! I use NJParcels all the time to explore the
neighborhoods around me. It's really great to learn more about how the site
was built.

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johnjreiser
Thanks! I welcome any feedback you might have on how I can make it even more
useful.

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amelius
Title should be more descriptive, imho.

