This code was developed as companion material for my 2025 Hands-on online mapping course with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin, June 2 to 29, 2025.
We will use the free features of these services you should sign up for before the class begins. I encourage you to play with these services a little, too, if you have time:
- Datawrapper, a charting and mapping tool. You can create an account with your email or use your existing Github, Google or Microsoft accounts.
- Github, a place to store — and use — computer code. We'll use this to provide you with your own copy of the class code and to operate your own "computer in a cloud," with a service Github calls "Codespaces."
- Amazon Web Services, one of many cloud storage services that allow you to put files on the internet for anyone to view. This is where we'll put our public map files.
We'll also use Mapshaper, a free, powerful tool made by Matthew Bloch of the New York Times (no signup necessary).
And we'll use Protomaps, another free and powerful tool, made by Brandon Liu. Protomaps lets you make interactive, zoomable maps without the need of a mapping service (no signup necessary).
- Protomaps
- Brandon Liu, the creator of Protomaps.
- A video about the philosophy behind Protomaps, by Brandon Liu at the 2023 conference of NACIS, a big, respected conference of mapmakers.
- My Github page, where you got this code.
- The original copy of the mapping code.
- The Protomaps API, where you can get and use world map tiles for cheap (or free).
- Tippecanoe, the geojson-to-tile tool by Erica Fischer
- The Protomaps documentation for our advanced Amazon Web Services setup.
- The source of our map tiles when we take a slice for Florida.
- U.S. Weather Service historical tornadoes page
- Our hurricane-zone data for Miami