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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.