Over the past year, I have been struggling with how to make the website useful for those who are looking for information about North America’s historic and present day canals and navigations. Certainly the site has a wealth of information if you can find it. I recently updated the stock of the American Canals newsletters with all the issues between 1972 and 2020. I updated the index so now you can simply search for a word or author and have an answer to which issue has what you need. We have been playing with the canal sites and the canal boat rides maps for a couple years and I find them very helpful, especially when I am visiting a new place and I want to know what might be nearby. And we have the canal index pages, which even with the odd name, can be very useful in their documentation of a site or canal.
The biggest hurdle is the website itself. I adopted the site from David Barber (the previous president) and have been trying to work within the confines of the sites architecture. There is so much information here and so many links that redoing it all is a daunting task that I don’t wish to take on. So each change has to work within what we have.
Then I got to thinking about a map of North America with each state/province “clickable.” When you click on the state you would be presented with a updated page that would have information about the current and abandoned canals, what state, local, or regional groups might be working to preserve the canals or canal sites, and of course the canal index pages.
So you will now see a map of North America on the home page.
When you click on a state you will open a page about the state. Hopefully this helps to stream-line things for everyone and improves the functionality of the site. As I update the state pages, they will be linked to the map and the state will turn green. If it is light-blue it has yet to be completed. States with no canals will be grey. When all the state pages have been revised, the clunky drop-down menu will go away.
Let me know what you think. And if you can, check your state’s page to see what and who should be added.