[mapserver-users] Beginning MapServer User needs help

[Rahkonen Jukka (Tike)]

Hi,

I am willing to help but I would rather do it in some other way than trying to make that tutorial to work. For my mind it has been a good start as a tutorial but it has never been ready enough to be given for the beginners and now it is also outdated.
- Mapfile is not valid because it does not start with the magic word "MAP"
- Mapfile is using deprecated LAYER-CLASS while the current way it to have LAYER-CLASS-STYLE
- The mapfile is unnecessary simple. It would be better to learn users to use projection blocks everywhere.
- It would be more clear to use absolute paths instead of relative to shapepath
- It should contain MS_ERRORFILE and #DEBUG 5 set plus an instruction to remove # in case of troubles and have a look at the errorfile.

I think also that it would be better for the beginners to make a WMS service instead of using html templates and use QGIS or a web browser with handwritten WMS GetMap call as the first client. Page http://mapserver.org/ogc/wms_server.html is of much better reading but naturally it would be nice to get a map out of Mapserver with minimal work. It would make new users to believe that Mapserver really works. If we had an official installer for Mapserver it could come with a few small datasets and ready made mapfiles so that users would have something that works out-of-the-box after installation. Nightly/weekly or at least monthly builds would be welcome.

I am not sure if this soon 3 years old tutorial still works but you can have a try http://latuviitta.org/documents/Super_easy_WMS_server.pdf


-Jukka Rahkonen-



________________________________
Deborah Traver

> Is anyone willing to help me figure out my issues? I am doing a tutorial on gistutor.com/mapserver<http://www.gistutor.com/mapserver/3-beginner-mapserver-tutorials/7-how-to-generate-a-simple-map-using-mapserver-and-a-shapefile.html>, and have followed it to the tee. I am a ms4w user. Mapserver and apache are installed correctly. I imagine I am making a small mistake somewhere in my MapFile &/or html. I tried sending a more detailed email, but it was too large to send. I can send more info to anyone that has a few minutes for me.

Cheers,
Deb
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