Button Link to Visitors’ Map

A hack to the hack:  Steve Rubel reported on yet another Goggle Maps mash-up displaying  the location of your blog-readers.  I like the functionality, hate the appearance, so here are the steps to improve it:

• Submit your site to Gvisit.com
• Get the script that allows you to display the visitor list on your blog, and paste it into your blog template / sidebar. 
• Display

  your blog. You’ll probably dislike the big block of city listings..

  that’s fine, just click on the list, it will take you to the gvisit

  site and display the map. (If your list is empty, relax, come back

  later, gvisit updates hourly)

• Copy the URL your browser shows while you are at the map display.
• Now go to Brilliant Button Maker  and create a button you like. Mine looks like this:
• Make the newly created image a URL, pointing to the address you just copied 2 steps above.
• Replace the gvisit script with the new one, which will look something like this:  <a href=”http://www.gvisit.com/map.php?sid=youridnumberfromthecopiedurl”><img alt=”Visitor-map” src=”http://yourfilelocation/yourbuttonfilename.png” </a>

 Voila!  Now you have a cool button that takes you to the Visitor Map directly, like mine does:   

Update (10.24) I’ve taken the Visitor Map (Gvisit) off. MapStats is the clear winner. See here.

Tags: Visitor Map, Google Maps, mash-up, Google mash-up, Blogs, Blogging