{"id":76281,"date":"2017-03-28T09:35:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T09:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/an-introduction-to-hosting-your-own-story-map\/"},"modified":"2021-04-29T08:10:43","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T15:10:43","slug":"an-introduction-to-hosting-your-own-story-map","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/story-maps\/constituent-engagement\/an-introduction-to-hosting-your-own-story-map","title":{"rendered":"An introduction to hosting your own Classic Story Map"},"author":5441,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[37131],"tags":[29121],"industry":[],"product":[36551,36611,36601],"class_list":["post-76281","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constituent-engagement","tag-story-maps-developers-corner","product-arcgis-online","product-story-maps","product-developers"],"acf":{"short_description":"Esri Story Maps are open source, so you can download the code from GitHub and host it yourself...","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: This blog covers the classic Esri Story Maps. Story authors are encouraged to use the new\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-storymaps\/overview\">ArcGIS StoryMaps<\/a> to create stories; however, Esri will continue to maintain the classic templates for your use. For more information, see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/arcgis-storymaps\/product-road-map\">Product road map<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Classic Esri Story Maps are <em>open source<\/em>. This means you can download the code for any of the Story Map apps <a href=\"http:\/\/esri.github.io\/#Storytelling\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">from GitHub<\/a>, host it on your own server, and even customize it. While the needs of most story map authors will be served using the versions of these apps that are hosted on ArcGIS Online (or an ArcGIS Enterprise portal), there are a few reasons to consider self-hosting.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #007ac2;\">Why host an\u00a0app?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>There are several benefits to hosting a Story Map app, the most obvious is you can <strong>give your story a custom URL<\/strong> on your organization\u2019s domain. So, instead of a standard arcgis.com URL:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><code>www.arcgis.com\/apps\/Cascade\/index.html?appid=abcdef123456\u2026<\/code><\/p>\n<p>your story can have a URL like this:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><code>www.our-agency.gov\/stories\/our-latest-story\/<\/code>.<\/p>\n<p>You can also set up web analytics to <strong>capture statistics<\/strong> about who\u2019s reading your story and <strong>enhance how your story looks when it\u2019s shared<\/strong> on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a designer who knows HTML and CSS, you can <strong>style<\/strong> a Story Map app to change its appearance beyond what is possible in the builder. A popular style change is to add a banner image to a Map Tour, like in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kygeonet.ky.gov\/StoryMaps\/KyFrontierTrails\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Kentucky&#8217;s Frontier Trails&#8221; story<\/a> from the University of Kentucky\u00a0and the\u00a0Commonwealth Office of Technology, Division of Geographic Information (DGI).<\/p>\n<section>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn-images-1.medium.com\/max\/1600\/1*rFS4MegOQVh7ceMHXp6AMg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1104\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<p>Finally, developers can <strong>customize<\/strong> an app to add new features. Examples of customizations are adding <a href=\"https:\/\/timw1984.github.io\/france\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">background audio<\/a> or a <a href=\"http:\/\/geoapps.esri.co\/festereopicnic2017\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cover page<\/a> to your story.\u00a0There are many\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/storymaps.arcgis.com\/en\/gallery\/#s=0&amp;md=storymaps-format:customized\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">styled and customized story maps<\/a>\u00a0in our gallery that you can review for ideas, and our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/story-maps-developers-corner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">developer blog<\/a>\u00a0has lots of articles about how to make specific customizations.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Want to learn more about how apps work when they are hosted on your own server and get step-by-step instructions?\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Read the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/story-maps-developers-corner\/an-introduction-to-hosting-your-own-story-map-e2450181ad2f#.wv8lz74q1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">full article<\/a><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u00a0on hosting your own Story Map on our developer blog<\/span><span style=\"color: #008000;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><em>This article was published in March 2017 and was updated in December 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n"}],"authors":[{"ID":5441,"user_firstname":"Owen","user_lastname":"Evans","nickname":"Owen Evans","user_nicename":"oevans","display_name":"Owen Evans","user_email":"OEvans@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2018-03-02 00:17:09","user_description":"Owen is the lead product engineer for ArcGIS StoryMaps and has been with Esri since 2004. Before joining the StoryMaps team, he spent 11 years as a solution engineer on Esri's National Government team helping people understand the value and utility of geospatial thinking.","user_avatar":"<img data-del=\"avatar\" src='https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2018\/03\/OJE_FedGIS.jpg' class='avatar pp-user-avatar avatar-96 photo ' height='96' width='96'\/>"}],"related_articles":"","card_image":false,"wide_image":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An introduction to hosting your own Classic Story Map<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/story-maps\/constituent-engagement\/an-introduction-to-hosting-your-own-story-map\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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