I have always been enthusiastic with maps. I spent hours paging my map book in geography classes instead of listening to the teacher. The colors and different types of maps were always fascinating and so full of knowledge to my opinion, so I never left any map under my hands to pass without carefully looking at it, learning as much as I could about its features. When I grew up I got involved with the serious maps, those of the 1:50,000 scales, which weren’t as picturesque as the ones I used to "play" with – they definitely did not offer the chance of imaginative travel in far places - but on the other hand were so detailed, I could read them like those detective books I never read. When I traveled abroad, I was always happy to find such maps in farm houses I was staying in. Maps became my dictionary for knowing new places – I was not much interested in guide books as long as I had a good detailed map. The UK, and specifically Wales, was the ideal place for that. There were many farms and many had rooms for rent. The land was far from being a homogenic grassy plain, and best of all was that all farmers had their copy of the areas 1:50,000 map just on that typical table on which they put all the brochures and tourist books, ready for their gusts to read. The map however, always seemed so lonely among the other color papers and booklets printed by local tourism authorities. I guess that most tourists didn’t find that map worth reading… They were off going to one of those castles they read about in lonely planet. For me those maps were my temporary visa of becoming, at least as far as walking in nature is a sign of being local, much closer to the places I was visiting then the rest of the tourists. Carefully reading and scanning into my memory all the height marks, streams, ruins and my favorite "Moat & Bailey" mounds (and there was always one in the near vicinity), I spent an hour in the farms guest lounge and then went out into the field ready to meet the places I believed to be nice according to the map… Most were actually just normal spots you could expect to find in the country, but being on "my map" made them special. There were always other unexpected adventures: suddenly sinking into mud up to your chest is always an adventure to people accustomed with places where the summer is dry and the winter is slightly less dry… The best part of those random trips (Oh – I did some others also in other countries, but in the UK the maps were the best…) was that there was no way of telling people back home how fun was it to walk in grassy hills among the sheep's for 10 hours following some imaginary route I decided the evening earlier, without being asked if had lost my mind taking an expensive flight to do just what I could do anywhere near home.

After bothering you with my disorganized thoughts about this no-issue (I actually had a break, had dinner, a good night sleep and early morning breakfast in the middle, so I had time to think about the no-issue in my entry) I should get back to the issue of map's, my site and the Great War.

When I first thought about turning my private research into a web site, it was mostly since I came across with whole complexes of parallel trench systems, barriers, obstacles and mine fields, set by people who didn’t want to share knowledge, didn’t want me to know things they didn’t know or just wanted to remain in the status of "the sole expert of this or that", occasionally meeting people who showed random or specific interest in the issue, thus regarding themselves as the supreme authority. Having one or two such supreme authorities is not that bad – sometimes, or usually, their arrogance would be annoying but then nothing's perfect – but then once you discover they actually know very little but still insist not to let others do some better checking's, it becomes a matter of people's right to know and be exposed to forgotten chapters in their regions history even if they are not distinguished visitors from far away places.

My first plan was to create a few pages, "geocities" kind of pages, about the battle I'm researching. I wanted this issue done and to go on with my life, however right at the beginning, when it turned out some people are not happy with me interfering with their hobby, I decided my research would be of a wider scale and published in a full version web site under a specific domain. This meant extra time, $$$ and favors from various people since I wanted my site to be "good looking" and not just knowledgeable. Going further with my work, it became inevitable for me not to notice the other WWI issues that were not handled properly. Since those issues suffered from the same fate as "my battle" – being handled by people some of whom were not ready to share knowledge – I decided to crown myself with humble title of "The founder of open code data base of the Great War battlefields in my region". Since there would not be too many readers of my blog – hopefully none among the people I was refereeing in the last paragraph - I’ll take the risk of adopting this ridicules title. Web site designing is a slow process, but I do intend to have my site include a useful data base anybody could read and learn from, which would not only share valuable data the way it is with battlefield in other places, but (and I must admit about this) also shake one or two people out of their annoying arrogance.

Maps are extremely valuable when we come to learn or present the story of a battle. There were already maps made for many battles I intend to handle. However, since the area had drastically changed and the format people expect to find had changed too, I wanted to create my own maps for my site.

I started by drastically redesigning the modern and old maps. Advanced use of software such as "Photoshop" allowed me to compare and correlate those maps, which had taken me some huge steps forward with my research. My first intension was to "clean" the modern map from irrelevant features and to adopt it for my site. When it turned that the official government division in charge of mapping were about to give me a great discount for the right to use their map in my non profit web site, I was pleased. However when it turned out this discount meant I would not have to pay a huge sum of money but only a large sum, I went to look for another solution. Photoshop and my Photoshop advisor (which is by accident also my wife) offered a solution for this matter too. Based on my knowledge of the area, the height marks on the existing maps and the numerous photos I took, I drew my own map, which in record time, turned to be much more appropriate for my use. After playing with this new toy for hours, I created the final version of the map I would use. I was pleased to discover it presented the reality behind the topography in an excellent way too. Even my own knowledge of the battle field was somewhat sharpen after looking at the final map.

Fully exploiting my Photoshop advisers' knowledge, I have adopted the "Layer" tool for further improvement of my map. Friendly and yet informative presentation of data was one of my guide lines, so I would have each map presented to offer the option for the user to choose, via a button, the extra features he would like to appear on the map. This would solve the problem of maps too overloaded with code names, advance line marks ext. It would also offer me the chance to use the same basic map, in different resolutions and different marks, in various pages of my site.

A person who saw my map – he knows much about the web and little about military history – told me I must have a large "water stamp" on the middle of my map so to prevent it from being used by others… I'm not sure about this: on one hand I put a hell lot of work on this site, but then I already adopted a title….