All the content is now done apart from one page which I need to give a bit of thought to – the sitemap for visitors (not to be confused with the xml “sitemap” file that I will need to generate after the site goes live and upload to google to help them find my pages for indexing).

And I’ve managed to crack the problem of the map polylines not showing in IE7. Seems they don’t like KML format colour codes – no idea what they use but through a lot of trial and error I’ve found some 8 digit codes which work. Thankfully.

Other prep stuff I’ve done this weekend includes checking all internal and external site links and fixing quite a few, adjusting some of the sidebar content to make the site flow a bit better, fine tuning of section widths and changing a few images.

I’ve looked at the google analytics for the site and it seems it gets the least site traffic on Saturdays, so next Saturday will be the day I finally put it live.

Should be fun – and then I can get into doing something else for a change, like reading books on agile project management!

This led me to discover KML (a file format and schema based on XML) – though initially developed for use with Google Earth, it is now able to be used with google maps.

And by recreating my maps using KML and various tools (see below) I now have this instead of this.

Previously, I needed to struggle with javascript and the Google Maps API to feed data from XML files.

Now it’s as simple as this:

1 – create your KML file in the format, and using the elements, described by Google

2 – upload your KML file to some server space

3 – if you use your own icons, upload them (as 32 x 32 size thumbnails) too

4 – go to Map Channels and create a free account

5 – generate your map by creating a map channel and inserting the url to your KML file

6 – Map Channels will then give you some code to paste into your web page in order to embed into it a google map based on the data in your KML file

Very easy!

And here are some tools to improve the quality of your maps:

* KML Tool: a tool for finding the KML Point co-ordinates and KML polyline co-ordinates of any given location

* Feed Validator: for validating your publicly hosted KML code

* KML Colour Converter: A downloadable tool for converting a html colour code (in format “#9E7658″) into a KML colour code (in format “7d58769e”)

Google does it again – nice and simple.