The guide
Planning
Planning is the last page under The guide in a guide's sidebar, tagged Advanced. It holds the guide's planning layer: itineraries, the day-by-day trips through the guide, and routes, with their line from a GPX or KML file. The places buyers use on the way, stays, transport, tours, food and parking, are helpers, on a page of their own. A guide sells without any of it, so the page opens with Do this last: finish your spots, photos and sales page first.
Routes reach buyers through spots and itineraries. Buyers open a spot's planning page with How to get there on the spot's page. A route shows there on each spot it is linked to, and on the guide map. An itinerary shows the routes and places it uses as its stops. A route that no spot or itinerary uses stays in the studio.
Everything here is part of the guide: on a live guide, your changes reach buyers when you publish them (Save, preview and publish).
Itineraries
The first box lists the guide's itineraries: day-by-day trips built from its spots, routes and places, with travel between the stops, notes and where to sleep. Each one opens in its own editor. Creating, editing and ordering them is on Itineraries.
Routes
The next box lists the guide's routes by name: hikes, walks and drive-in approaches. Each row shows the grade, the duration, the ascent and how many spots the route serves, as far as they are set.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| New route | Adds an empty route to the guide at once and opens it in the route editor. |
| Search routes | Filters the list by name or start. |
Before the first route, the box shows No routes yet.
A route without a name goes by its start, as in "Hike from" the start (or the word of its type, like "Drive from"). Without a start either, the studio lists it as an untitled route, and buyers see it numbered: Route 1, Route 2.
The route editor
Opening a route puts its editor in place of the list. All routes goes back to the list; changes you have not saved are dropped without a question. Save route saves everything at once: the fields, the linked spots and the places. Saved shows beside it until your next change. The parts below come in the order the editor shows them.
Route type
What kind of route it is: Hike, Walk, Bike ride, Drive, Ski tour or Paddle. A new route is a Hike. The type names a route that has no name ("Drive from" its start), shows when a buyer clicks the route's line on the guide map, and decides the time estimate of an import: only a Hike or a Walk gets one.
Route line
The route's line on a map, from a file or a link. Without one, the box offers Import a GPX or KML file: pick the file you exported from your planner app. Your browser reads the file; it is not uploaded. Only the line is kept, simplified to at most 500 points that hold its shape.
The import fills the route's numbers, measured on every point of the file:
- Distance (km), always.
- Ascent (m) and Descent (m), when the file has heights. Small ups and downs from GPS noise do not count. Heights that are all zero, which drawing tools write, count as no heights.
- A time estimate in Duration (min), when the field is empty and the route is a Hike or a Walk. It counts the distance, the ascent and the descent. Without heights in the file it uses the ascent and descent you typed; a Hike with neither gets no estimate.
- Start Google Maps link, when it is empty: a link to where the line starts.
A note under the line lists what the import filled. When the file has no heights, it asks you to add the ascent and descent yourself, and the duration when no estimate was made.
A file can hold several lines. Lines that continue one another, such as the days of a trek or a paused recording, join into one. Separate lines make the editor ask which one is this route: it lists each with its name and length. Click one to use it, or Join all in order to join them end to end in the file's order. Cancel leaves the route as it was.
Import from a link takes the share link of a drawing on map.geo.admin.ch or of a map in Google My Maps: paste it and press Import (or Enter). A My Maps map must be shared so that anyone with the link can view it. Links from Komoot, AllTrails and other planner apps cannot be read: the editor shows that app's export steps instead, and you import the file. A Google Maps link to a place or to directions carries no line.
With a line in place, the box shows its shape (a dot at the start, a ring at the end), the file's name and the length. Replace file imports another file in its place and fills the distance, ascent and descent again. Remove takes the line off the route. Both take effect when you save the route.
Buyers see the line on a map on the route's page, with an elevation profile under it when the line has heights: moving along the profile marks that point on the map. The guide map draws the line too, whenever a spot the route leads to is on it. Clicking the line shows the route's type, name and numbers, with a way into its page.
Name, description and duration
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The route's name. Left empty, the route goes by its start, as the hint under the field shows. |
| Description | Your text about the route, at the top of its page. |
| Duration (min) | How long the route takes, in minutes. Buyers see hours and minutes. |
More details
Chips under the fields add the rest: Difficulty, Ascent, Descent, Distance and Start point. A chip disappears once its fields show, and a field with a value always shows.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scale | The difficulty scale the grade is written in: SAC hiking (T1 to T6), Via ferrata (K1 to K6), CAI (T, E, EE, EEA), US class (Class 1 to 5), Mountain bike (S0 to S5), Whitewater (I to VI) or Other. Buyers do not see it; it decides how grades compare. A spot whose Access is Automatic shows the easiest grade among its routes as its Accessibility, compared on the scale most of them use. |
| Grade | The grade, as you write it. The empty field suggests one for the scale. |
| Effort label | A few words after the grade. Buyers read both together, like Moderate · Full day, or the effort label alone on a route without a grade. |
| Ascent (m) | Meters of climb. |
| Descent (m) | Meters of descent. It stays apart from the ascent and is never copied from it. |
| Distance (km) | The route's length. |
| Start (trailhead) | Where the route starts, in words. Buyers see it as a link to a map. |
| Start Google Maps link | The map link the start opens. Without one, the start opens a Google Maps search for its words. The field also takes links from a few other map sites; any other link is refused when you save, with a message that names the sites. |
Duration, ascent, descent and distance take numbers of zero or more. Anything else shows "Stats must be non-negative numbers." and Save route stays grey until you fix it.
On the route's page, buyers see these numbers in one bar: Difficulty, Duration, Elevation change (like +850m / -850m) and Distance, beside the spot's altitude. A value you leave empty hides its cell.
Custom properties
Rows of your own, a label and a value, for anything the fields above do not cover. Click a suggested label to add a row with it, or Custom property for an empty row; the cross removes a row. Buyers see each row in the route's details. A row needs both a label and a value: a half-filled row is refused when you save, and an empty one is dropped.
Approach
How buyers reach the start, one line per way of travel. Add leg adds a line. Each line has a Transit mode, one of Train, Bus, Cable car, Car, Boat, Ferry and Flight, and a Transit note: from where, to where, how often. Remove transit leg (the cross) deletes a line. A line without a note is dropped when you save. Buyers see the lines under Transit on the route's page, each as its mode and your note.
Equipment
No equipment needed says that the route needs no special gear: buyers see None. With the switch off, type each item into Add equipment and press Enter or type a comma; the cross on an item removes it. With no items and the switch off, the gear stays unknown, and buyers see no Equipment line at all.
Sources
Reference links, one per line. Buyers find them at the foot of the route's page, each named by its website; a line that is not a link shows as plain text.
Linked spots
The spots this route leads to. Search spots filters the list (screen readers call the field Search spots to link). Tick a spot to link it. Ticked spots are numbered in the order you tick them, and the route keeps them in that order. Quickest on a ticked spot marks this route as the quickest way to that spot. The mark is saved with the link, but the guide buyers read does not show it. A link an AI agent marked as a walk from the spot (listed for buyers under Walks from here) stays one when you save the route; the form has no field for it.
Each linked spot lists the route on its planning page, with its name, duration, grade and climb, and opens the route's page from there.
You can also link routes from the other side: in a spot's editor, Getting there (under Advanced options) ticks the guide's routes on and off for that spot, and each tick saves at once. See Spot location and planning facts.
Places on this route
The stays, transport, tours, food and parking the route uses, grouped by kind. Tick the ones on this route. Buyers see each ticked place as a card on the route's page. The opening hours of the first transport and the first stay also show under the route's name in a spot's list of routes.
New place adds a place without leaving the route. Its short form asks for the Type (one list for every kind of place, which reads Choose a type until you pick), the Name, Open, Cost and Website. While Cost is empty, it shows an example for the type's kind: From 120 EUR a night for a stay, 36 EUR round trip for transport, 45 EUR per person for a tour, Mains from 18 EUR for a place to eat and 5 EUR a day for parking. Create adds the place to the guide at once, as a helper with the category its type stands for, and ticks it here; the tick itself is saved with Save route. Cancel closes the form. Its pin and the spots it is for are set in its form on Helpers.
Deleting a route
Delete route, at the foot of the editor, asks first in Delete this route?: the route and its links leave the guide, while its spots and places stay. Its stops also leave every itinerary that uses it, as the dialog says. Delete route in the dialog deletes it, and Keep route closes the dialog. It cannot be undone.
Places
The stays, transport, tours, food and parking that used to have their boxes here are helpers now: pins with their own page, Helpers, under Spots. Each place you had made here became a helper, linked to the same spots, routes and itineraries. A route still lists the places it uses under Places on this route, and an itinerary can stop at any of them.
The example guide
The example guide's Planning opens every itinerary, route and place to look at. The fields show their values, with nothing to add, save or delete, and without the Do this last note.