Create a Story Map

Create a Story Map

You can use any of the Configurable Apps to build different types of focused web apps, all built with HTML/CSS/JavaScript. All of these web apps are developed on top of one or more web maps and are shared out as a web application. By default, these apps are stored and hosted in ArcGIS Online, but you can also download all of the code locally, and then customize them further or otherwise host them yourself on your own web server.

In this exercise, we're going to build a specific type of configurable web app, called a "Story Map".

1. Click this map to open the map in the Map Viewer. If you have your own map, you can try to use that too.

2. Click Share > Create a Web App > Configurable Apps.

3. Under the What do you want to do? column, click Build a Story Map.

4. In the thumbnail list of templates on the right, click to choose the Story Map Basic template.

5. On the right side popout of the page, click the blue button CREATE WEB APP.

6. Set the following properties:

Title: Health and Social Services
Tags: health, social, NYC
Summary: A NYC map containing health and social services along with other related layers of data.

Click DONE to launch the configuration page. (You may need to scroll down slightly to see the button.)

7. Now you are on the configuration page for the Story Map Basic template. On the top-left side of the page you should see 4 tabs: General, Theme, Options, Search. Click through each of those tabs to explore many of the ways that you can interactively modify the style and content of the story map framework. Feel free to use the configuration tools provided to change the look, feel, and basic messaging of your app.

For example:

• Add a subtitle to your app
• Change the header background color and add a logo
• Add header text and a header link
• Enable the search tool, and enable the searching of all sources

8. Click Save, then click Launch to test-drive your app.

Your app should look something like this.

9. Start with Step 1 again, but this time at Step 4, choose a different story map template. One that fits better the story you want to tell and the content you have--not only maps, but images, video, graphics, and narrative text.