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Tours are hosted at tour.mapsalive.com. Our server has demonstrated 99.999% network availability, which means that the network will be down no more than 5 minutes a year — as close to perfect as you can get.
The tours you create with MapsAlive are hosted independently of the MapsAlive web application. If, for example, MapsAlive is down for maintenance, your tours are still available. |
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| Can I download my tour to my computer and have another server host it? |
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| Yes. See our download page to learn how. |
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| How long does it take to create a tour? |
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| Simple tours only take minutes to create. More complete tours might take a few hours depending on the number of pages and slides, and how much time you spend writing descriptive text. |
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| What is a MapsAlive tour? |
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| A MapsAlive tour is a new kind of virtual tour that lets you explore any map by mousing over points of interest to see photographs and text. A tour is made up of one or more pages with maps and their associated slides and text. |
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| Why is a MapsAlive tour better than other virtual tours? |
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With a MapsAlive tour you never leave the page and you don't have browser windows popping up all over the place. You mouse over markers on a map and immediately see photos and text associated with each marker — no clicking required.
You can create your own tours using your own maps and photos — there is no need to hire a virtual tour provider (unless you want to). MapsAlive tours can be standalone websites or can be embedded directly into your own web page. And, you can use any image as a map. |
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| A MapsAlive map is an image of anything that you want to explore. For example, it could be a floor plan, a Google Earth image of a neighborhood, a city map, an organization chart, or even a diagram of the human body. You place markers on maps that let you interactively see text and images associated with each marker. |
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| What is a MapsAlive slide? |
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A MapsAlive slide is made up of a picture and/or text, or other kinds of content, that is associated with a marker on a map. A slide displays when you mouse over its marker on the map. For example, if you place a marker in the kitchen on a floor plan of a house, the slide associated with that marker could have a photo of the kitchen and descriptive text about the kitchen. You create a slide for each marker you place on a map.
Slides can be used to display photos, other images, text descriptions, videos or HTML content. Markers associated with slides can also have tooltip text and click actions such as linking to a URL or executing Javascript. |
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| What kinds of content can I display in my MapsAlive tours? |
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You can display many different kinds of content in your interactive tours, including:
- Images
- Text
- Video
- Flash
- HTML
- Tour-in-Tour™
- Web Pages
- Google maps
You can upload images, type and format text, enter HTML code and use Slide Macros (download PDF) to add content to your tour. Your images, text, videos and other content displays when you move your mouse over marker on your map. |
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| Can I display video in my slides? |
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Yes. You can display video or other media in a slide in a couple of different ways. You can paste the HTML code for the video into the Video field on the Slide Content Page or you can use the flash-macro in the Text field on the Slide Content page.
Note: Your video must already be hosted on a server somewhere such as YouTube or your own server. You cannot upload a video or movie directly to MapsAlive.
See Slide Content FAQ for instructions on how to add video. |
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| How many maps can I have in my tour? |
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| You can have as many maps as you want in your tour. Each map is on a separate page and has its own set of slides. |
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| How many pages can I have in my tour? |
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| There is no limit to the number of pages you can have in your tour. |
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| How many slides can I have in my tour? |
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| You can have as many slides as you want in your tour so long as you have purchased enough slides for the number of markers you will use on your map. Remember that you can use slides to display photos, text descriptions, or both, and you can use them to display a tooltip, link to another page in your tour or a URL, or execute Javascript. |
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| How do I know what size to make my tour? |
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When you first create a tour MapsAlive chooses a default page size (width and height) and analyzes your map and slide photo to choose the best layout. You can change your tour layout and size at any time by clicking Layout Options from the Page menu. The size you choose depends on how you plan to use your tour and the sizes of your maps and images. If you will be using your tour as a standalone website, you can make it any size you want, keeping in mind the most common monitor sizes. If your tour is bigger that what fits on a monitor your users will have to use the scroll bars to see parts of the pages.
If you are embedding your tour within another web page (such as a real estate listing page) you should choose a tour width and height that fits within the space available on that page.
Another factor in deciding how big your tour should be is the size of your map and slide images. MapsAlive will automatically reduce map and slide images if they are larger than the space available based on your tour size, but you should consider how large you want them to be.
To maximize the space available for your map you can use popup slides that appear on top of the map image when you mouse over markers. This lets you use more space for the map itself. Another option is to use MapZoom for large map images. This feature lets you display a large map in a smaller area on your page because you can zoom in and out and drag the map to view different areas.
Keep in mind that you can change the page size later and also adjust the sizes of the elements on your pages individually. |
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| Can anyone else edit my tour? |
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| You must login to your account to edit your tour. Unless you give someone your email and password there is no way that anyone else can modify your tour. |
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| How long will my tour be hosted on the web? |
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| Your tour is hosted for as long as you have an active MapsAlive membership. MapsAlive memberships are good for one year. When your membership is close to expiring, we will send you an email message reminding you to renew. |
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| Can I change my tour once I’ve published it? |
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Yes. You can login to your account at any time to edit your tour. You can add or delete pages or slides and change existing pages and slides. To see your changes on the web, you publish your tour again by going to Tour Preview and clicking the Publish button.
See "See my changes on the internet" in the How To FAQ. |
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| Who supplies the images for my tour? |
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| You supply the images and text for the maps and slides in your tour. You upload them from your hard drive when you create a tour. |
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| Can I reuse my tours and slides? |
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Yes. So long as you have an active MapsAlive membership you can delete tours and create new ones. And, you can replace photos and text at any time.
For example, suppose you have a Paid Membership and have purchased 25 slides. Then you create a tour for a house for sale with 25 slides and use it for 3 months. When the house sells you can delete that tour (or download it and delete it) and then create one or more new tours with a total of 25 slides. The total number of slides in all your tours at one time can not exceed the number of slides you have purchased. |
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| Can I import my tour data to save time? |
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Yes, you can import several kinds of content in one operation to save time creating and updating your tours.
You can import a zip file of photos and MapsAlive will automatically create or update slides from the photos found in the zip file. You can also import slide content including titles, text, media, marker names, and categories. And you can import HTML area tags and have MapsAlive automatically create polygon-shaped markers from them.
To learn more, see the documentation on the Import Slides page in the Tour Builder.
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