Comments on: New Meetinghouse Locator on LDS.org – Beta Release

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:41:49 +0000

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. The enhancement requests have all been noted. I’ll probably stop checking this post for new ideas, so anything else should be funneled through the Feedback link on the site. Thanks again!

By: Matt Nico

Matt Nico — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:53:19 +0000

I’ll vote up ward boundaries being delineated on the map.

I’m also wondering if there’s any way to tap into the information available on the site. I’m creating some all-inclusive mapping software that helps LDS people when they relocate to a new area. I’m wondering if there’s a way I can find out which ward each home in a group of listings is located in. Is there an API for that?

By: Ted

Ted — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:05:13 +0000

Hey Brian — killer schedule! Good luck with that. Hope this is an improvement. The meeting times are up to the local wards and branches to keep updated.

By: Brian J. Hill

Brian J. Hill — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:50:41 +0000

THANK YOU!!!!!
My job requires me to be in a new town EVERY week (currently I’ve been in a new ward each week for 83 consecutive weeks,) and I’ve had a terrible time using the old meetinghouse locator. The interface was terrible and Mapquest isn’t nearly as useful as Google or Microsoft maps. I’m sooooo glad there’s a new version. One suggestion: I’ve found that the meeting times on the old meetinghouse locator weren’t always accurate, meaning I’d end up missing church for that week. If there’s a way of updating the meeting times more otften than with the old locator, I sure would appreciate it!

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:21:44 +0000

Also see comments and responses on http://www.ldscio.org/2008/06/21/moving-forward/#comments

By: LDS Art Collector

LDS Art Collector — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:24:09 +0000

Great Post

By: New LDS Meeting House Locator - Corndogs + Avocados

New LDS Meeting House Locator - Corndogs + Avocados — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:20:56 +0000

[...] LDS Media Talk lists many new features not available on the current meetinghouse locator, including: [...]

By: Silus Grok

Silus Grok — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:52:09 +0000

… another reason to have unit boundaries!

YAY!

By: CuriousGIS

CuriousGIS — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:34:12 +0000

This is a big improvement over the current meetinghouse locator, the membership will enjoy it. It did have issues with rural route / box addresses. Then again I am assuming they are using a standard geocoder to find addresses. Most rural routes will never geocode using standard fair street data.

To help those that do have rural routes and or places where they do not have a street files, and/or the geocoder source data is not robust they should include a layer to view the boundaries of the units. I searched for a few rural routes in our unit and none of them even came close to being properly geocoded. I also tried some less developed countries and the application would tell me to please wait while it searched but never continue.

If they set up multiple geocoders the application could try each in turn until it had a match, for those areas that it could not find a good match it could return the boundaries of the units/stakes based on city, state equivalent, or even country.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:41:26 +0000

Greg,
We are using ESRI’s ArcGIS Manager on the back end to do proximity analysis (closest meetinghouses) and to query the Church layers to see which wards/branches are at a location. We have also created a custom geocoder for certain high-growth areas in Utah and other locations that is being published and used by ArcGIS Manager.

Thanks for all the comments!