Where's George? ® 2.2 Help with Page: Hits by State

This is where you go to create or update your "Hits by State map"

You can also have the system put the map you design in your profile for you... ....AUTOMATICALLY!

This is my attempt to clarify these instructions based on difficulties reported in the Forums by various people. If there is anything you believe could be stated with more clarity or find typo's, grammatical errors, etc, please feel free to contact me with your ideas or edit the page yourself. - JT

These instructions are applicable to both the Hits By State Map and the Hits By County Map (except where noted) and to both the initial generation of a map and the updating of an existing map (except where noted). It is highly recommended (particularly for first timers) that you create a backup of your profile, or at least the Profile Text section, before proceeding. Just copy and paste the contents of the Profile Text section to a text file saved on your computer. Use Notepad or another text editor, not a word processor like MS Word or Wordpad.

There is one, and ONLY ONE, page which must be current PRIOR TO the generation of either the Hits By State Map or the Hits By County Map. That page is the Hits By State page. You may wish to Refresh the Your Bills page and/or the various Hits By ZIP Code/County/City pages for your own enjoyment and to keep the data synchronized between the various pages, but those pages are not involved in the process of generating a hit map. Note: Generation of the maps and the refreshing the other pages immediately after refreshing the Hits By State page places the minimum strain on system resources.

#1) If you have not Refreshed your Hits By State page since receiving your latest hits, go back to the Your Bills page and then to the Hits By State page. **If you are a new FOG creating your first maps, follow this procedure even if you have not received any new hits since you last refreshed the Hits By State page.** Refresh the page by clicking on the line that reads:
"*** To REFRESH this report, click here ***"
Continue clicking uptil the status indicated "completed". The date/time stamp should then be current.

#2) Return to the Hits By State (or County) Map page. Enter your desired Cutoff values, increasing in value from #1 to #4. The number you enter will be the lower end of the range of hits for the color to the right of the box. For example, if you enter Cutoff #1 = 3 and Cutoff #2 = 6, the states (or counties) with 3, 4, and 5 hits will be displayed in the color indicated in the line containing Cutoff #1. States (or counties) with 1 or 2 hits will be displayed in the color indicated in the "Less than First Cutoff" line. The system will remember your latest selection.

#3) Enter the Hexadecimal Codes (on the County Map only, you must include the # sign) for the color you wish to display for each range of hits. If you would like to use something different from the default colors you may select your own colors from this color chart (link provided by HMG in MAss). For the Hits By County Map (only) you may also choose to select a color from the Artist's Palette located next to each color box. The system will remember your latest selection.

#4) Click the "Click to Create or Refresh your hit map!" button.
.... 4a) If you are satisfied with the map that appears, proceed to Step 5.
.... 4b) If no map appears, or the map does not look anything like other maps you have seen, you may have done something incorrectly. Make sure that you have Refreshed the Hits By State page (Step 1). Make sure that you have entered valid Cutoff values (Step 2) and color codes (Step 3) in all the boxes. If all else fails try the New User/Q&A Forum for help with your particular problem. It may help someone to identify the problem if you continue with Step 5 even though the map does not appear to be correct.
.... 4c) If the map appears but you are not satisfied with the appearance of the map, select new Cutoff values and/or color codes and click the "Get a hit map!" button again.

#5) If you are generating the map for the first time there is one more step. Where it says "To add this map to your User Profile: Click Here", click the button. This will add the map and color legend table to the bottom of your profile. You may leave it there or move it to any place in your profile that you desire by doing a Cut and Paste in the Profile Text section of the User Profile page. Be certain to get the entire block of code. It is approximately 30 lines of code that begins with a {center} tag and ends with a {/center} tag.

#6) If you are updating an existing map the new map should now be in your profile. If it appears to be the previous map rather than the new map it is most likely that your are looking at a copy of the old map stored in your local cache. You must Refresh (IE) or Reload (NS) your profile. This is NOT the Refresh/Reload button on your Standard Button Toolbar (IE) or Navigation Toolbar (NS). To Refresh/Reload your profile, Right Click on the background of your profile and select the Refresh/Reload option, or hit the F5 Function Key (IE) or Ctrl-F5 (NSand FF). If If all else fails:
.... Close your profile window
.... IE Users: Tools | Internet Options | General | Delete Files | Click the check box to delete offline content | OK
.... NS Users (Ver 7 and earlier): Edit | Preferences | Expand the Advanced listing | Cache | Clear Cache
.... NS (Ver 8) and FF Users: Tools | Options | Privacy and click the Clear button for the Cache
.... Open your profile again

#7) If you have changed the previous Cutoff values or color codes, you will notice that the color legend table has not been updated to reflect the new values. This must be done separately. There are (at least) three method of doing this.
.... 7a) Manually edit the existing table in your profile to match the new values.
.... 7b) Replace the existing table with the new one by doing a Copy and Paste from the "HTML code for your Legend (copy/paste from here):" box to your profile. Be sure to get all of the new table (around 23 lines) and delete all of the old table. They each begin with a {table} tag and end with a {/table} tag.
.... 7c) Delete the existing map and color legend table (as identified in Step 5) from your profile and follow Step 5.

For another reference on this map please visit WG FOG 50 State Map Instructions (by HMG)

Update History:

Oct-08-09 07:09 AM by Serene