Re: cluster map update!

All my dots are well and truely gone from the cluster map at right! Thanks so much to my avid readers in New Zealand the United States, UK, Australia and Canada (These were the areas showing where readers who read the blog most came from) as well as the the many other viewers from so many countries: Asia, Southeast Asia, South america, continental europe etc.
See Cluster Maps explaination below of their archiving policy. As I am on the free membership I have not saved a copy of my "big map" covered in the red dots but know that it did plot the travels of some friends of mine and it is always interesting to see a hit in a country where you know your friend is visiting!!

I see a note saying "This map was (or will be) archived", or I've noticed that my lovely dots are gone. What does this mean?
This notification (and the sudden disappearance of dots) means that a regular (normally yearly) archive has either just occurred or is imminent (for some users, this happens monthly or weekly, as explained below). Your old thumbnail maps (or bigger maps for ClustrMaps+ users) will remain available in a stored archive, which is accessible as follows: when you zoom in to the world map, you'll see (high up on the page) a line labelled:

Navigation: Map with smaller clustrs | Maps Archive | Notes | Full Map Key

The second link ('Maps Archive') will take you to the page where your previous thumbnail map is stored (ClustrMaps+ users have a large list of complete earlier maps, including all the zoomed-in maps). You can click on the dates shown or 'turn thumbnails... on' to see the earlier map....


If it helps to explain things to your own readers, you can always copy and paste the archive map referred to above (right-click and Save as... or right-click and View Image and note the URL and use that), and add that in to the appropriate page near your current active ClustrMaps thumbnail map with a suitable commentary (e.g. "Last year's totals:"). Note that for users of the free ClustrMaps service, only the thumbnail maps, i.e. NOT the large maps, are saved in the archive! This news does not do you much good after-the-fact, but we're trying to make it more obvious in advance in other places throughout the site, and as of October 2007 we have added advance warning emails to let you know when this is about to happen so you can save a snapshot of your older map.