Geograph for Developers

It's all Open Source

First and foremost Geograph is a community project, and to this end all the source code that powers the site is Open Source. See the downloads page. We have our own SVN Repository for code and Trac setup for project management, see also our hub: Link .

If you know what any of the following mean, and have an interest in helping out, then please get in touch
PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, Smarty, Adodb, Javascript, jQuery, XML, RSS, KML, GeoRSS, REST.

Starting your own Geograph Project

As noted, the source is open-source, so can download the code, and use it to start a Geograph project for your own Country or area.

It's what Geograph Germany did :)

It could be a lot of work, but we can attest to how fun and rewarding it can be! We would love to see more projects, and will do what we can to assist.

Building your own website using Geograph Images

We are starting a new network of Geograph Portals, mini websites loading a curated subset of geograph images.

Anyone can run these, with a bit of PHP/MySQL, and a webserver. Great a portal showcasing images on your own favourite topic.

Get the Code at: github.com/barryhunter/geoportal - and customise as needed.

But even if don't want to use the geoportal as a foundation, can still use the API directly to access images, see below. (or for large quantities of images, use the downloads)

Resources and Links

• Developers Virtual Machine (see below) - run a copy of Geograph locally to experiment
• Live API - ondemand access to Geograph Data
• Data Downloads - load our data into your mysql database
• Javascript PlayGround - mini-site to create javascript applications. Includes hosting and easy access to Geograph API
• API demos: one, two (more in the Javascript Playground above)
• SVN Repository

(more: Geograph Hub)

Ready to Run - Developers Virtual Machine

We have created a pre-configured WMware virtual machine, this comes with all the software needed for the website to run. This is a great way to explore how the site works, and a quickstart way to get involved in development. You can download the machine image from our torrents download site or read more

• All you need is the (free) VMplayer application, and can run Geograph locally in a matter of minutes.

Supporting the geograph.org.uk developers

Even if you can't help us with coding directly, the developers are always looking for beta testers, and ideas for current and upcoming features. The Discussion area is the best place to find out about this, but contact us directly and there might be an unreleased feature you could help with.

See also the Geograph-API-Users Google Discussion Group

Reusing our Images and Data

As all the images are Creative Commons Licensed, we actively promote reuse. We have an API available to make getting access to data, see this help page: Link

Big ideas for Geograph

We have put together a page: Big Ideas for Geograph, which lists a number of ideas for projects involving geograph data and/or the geograph website; particularly suited to work by a new or external developer.

Moving forward...

A random list of things we would love to see but don't have the time to develop ... (in no particular order)

• Android/iPhone mobile Application - submit and browse images on the move
• Flash-based Image viewers (lots of possibilities here...)
• Statistics - we have the weblogs, just not the application to process them (aside from generic stats pages like awstats) - looking for a solution to give per photo/user breakdowns)
• Develop new educational games (ideally incorporating our photos and maps!)
• and anything else you can think off!

... then there is, of course, the ongoing grammar and typo updates for documentation etc, and compatibility testing of all ongoing features ...

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