Guidelines - outdooractive Developers

You must purchase an API license and accept the Outdooractive API terms and conditions in order to use the Outdooractive API.

The guidelines below provide information about the general rules and attribution requirements that you need to comply with. These are:

Cite Outdooractive: reference the use of the Outdooractive Platform in your “about” section
Cite source and author: reference the content source and the author on detail pages
Cite images: reference the image source, the photographer and the image licence
Implement Tracking: invoke the content tracking code for all teaser and detail views
Search Engine Indexing: prevent content that is not your own from being indexed by search engines
Synchronizing: update changes daily

These rules apply to websites, mobile apps and all other use cases.

Please get in contact if you have any question about licensing and API keys.

Cite Outdooractive

You have to add a reference to the Outdooractive Platform including an icon, a link and a text to your “about” section.

HTML (english):

<a href="//www.outdooractive.com"
   title="This website uses technology and content from the Outdooractive Platform.">
  <img src="//res.oastatic.com/partner/outdooractive-black.png" alt="outdooractive" />
  This website uses technology and content from the Outdooractive Platform.
</a>

Rendered (english):

This website uses technology and content from the Outdooractive Platform.

HTML (german):

<a href="//www.outdooractive.com"
   title="Diese Webseite nutzt Technologie und Inhalte der Outdooractive Plattform.">
  <img src="//res.oastatic.com/partner/outdooractive-black.png" alt="outdooractive" />
  Diese Webseite nutzt Technologie und Inhalte der Outdooractive Plattform.
</a>

Rendered (german):

Diese Webseite nutzt Technologie und Inhalte der Outdooractive Plattform.

HTML (italian):

<a href="//www.outdooractive.com"
   title="Questo sito utilizza contenuti e soluzioni tecnologiche della piattaforma Outdooractive.">
  <img src="//res.oastatic.com/partner/outdooractive-black.png" alt="outdooractive" />
  Questo sito utilizza contenuti e soluzioni tecnologiche della piattaforma Outdooractive.
</a>

Rendered (italian):

Questo sito utilizza contenuti e soluzioni tecnologiche della piattaforma Outdooractive.

Please get in contact with us in case of all other languages.

You may choose one of the following two icons depending on the background color of your customer’s pages:

https://res.oastatic.com/partner/outdooractive-black.png

https://res.oastatic.com/partner/outdooractive-white.png

Please keep in mind that the logos integrated into the JavaScript APIs must not be modified:

FlexView API: the icon “part of outdooractive” and its hyperlink must not be hidden or modified.
Map: the Outdooractive Logo (bottom left) and the Outdooractive Terms of Use (bottom right) must not be hidden or modified.
PDF Download: the Outdooractive Logo “part of outdooractive” and its hyperlink must not be hidden or modified.

Cite Source and Author

You must provide the source and the author of an object (e.g. a tour, a POI, etc.) on all detail views.

A content object (e.g. a tour, a POI, etc.) has a source and was created and edited by an author. You must provide:

the source’s title
the source’s icon (logo)
the author’s name

Author name and source title must be recognizable/readable:

minimal font size:
- 0.875em or your base font size
- e.g. 14px using a base font size of 16px
minimal contrast ratio:
- 4.5:1 (WCAG “AA”-Level)
- e.g. background color #fff and font color #666

The source icon must be recognizable:

keep original aspect ratio
keep original colors, contrast and brightness
the long edge (maximum of width and height) must be >= 50px

Source must be rendered next to the headline (e.g. a tour’s title) ensuring a strong relation to the content object.

See the tour detail pages on Outdooractive for an example.

An example of a source title and icon:

Render the source with text and logo

The Data API provides all information about source and author, see Data Model Reference:

meta/source/@name: source name
meta/source/@url: source url
meta/source/logo/@id: source logo image id -> img.oastatic.com/img/1196956/.jpg
meta/author: author plain text name

The meta block of a tour:

<meta>
  <date created="2016-06-17T13:30:30" lastModified="2016-07-12T14:05:45" firstPublish="2016-07-12T14:05:45"/>
  <system createdIn="12" lastModifiedIn="12"/>
  <source id="3464852" name="AV-alpenvereinaktiv.com">
    <logo logo="true" id="3465236">
      <title>AV-alpenvereinaktiv.com</title>
    </logo>
    <favicon id="5366389">
      <title>alpenvereinaktiv.com</title>
    </favicon>
  </source>
  <workflow state="published"/>
  <authorFull>
    <id>14440699</id>
    <name>Uwe Grinzinger</name>
    <profileImageId>14631532</profileImageId>
  </authorFull>
  <author>Uwe Grinzinger</author>
  <translation>de</translation>
</meta>

Minimal template to provide information about source and author:

<img src="[LOGO-URL]"></img>
<p>This tour is presented by: [SOURCE-TITLE], Author: [AUTHOR-NAME]</p>

The final html snippet:

<img src="https://img.oastatic.com/img/3465236/.jpg"></img>
<p>This tour is presented by: AV-alpenvereinaktiv.com, Author: Uwe Grinzinger</p>

Note: The FlexView API adds information about source and author to all detail views automatically. You must add a reference to source and author including title and icon if you are building custom detail views using the Data API and/or the Map API.

Cite Images

You have to provide the source, author and license of all images.

Source, author and license are listed inside an image’s meta block:

images/image/meta/author: image author/photographer
images/image/meta/source/@name: source name
images/image/meta/license/@short: license name
images/image/meta/license/@url: licence url

A meta block of an image:

<image gallery="true" id="18684355">
  <title>Steiler Zahn: Das Kasereck (links), gesehen vom Scharnock</title>
  <author>Uwe Grinzinger</author>
  <source>www.agentur-bergwerk.at</source>
  <meta>
    <date created="2016-06-18T20:30:02" lastModified="2016-07-12T14:04:03" firstPublish="2016-06-18T20:30:03"/>
    <system createdIn="12" lastModifiedIn="12"/>
    <source name="Agentur Bergwerk"/>
    <workflow state="published"/>
    <authorFull>
      <id>14440699</id>
      <name>Uwe Grinzinger</name>
      <profileImageId>14631532</profileImageId>
    </authorFull>
    <author>Uwe Grinzinger</author>
  </meta>
  <license id="16925729" short="CC BY-NC" url="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.de"/>
</image>

Minimal html template:

Photo: [AUTHOR], <a href="[LICENSE-URL]">[LICENSE-SHORT]</a>, [SOURCE]

Example html result:

Photo: Uwe Grinzinger, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en">CC BY-NC</a>, Agentur Bergwerk

Note: The FlexView API adds information about source, licence and author to all images out-of-the-box. You must add a reference to source, licence and author if you are building custom detail views using the Data API and/or the Map API.

Implement Tracking

The Outdooractive Content Tracking counts all views of tours, POIs and any other content object. You have to track the views on your website or inside your mobile app using the Outdooractive Tracking API.

There are two different views of a content object (a tour, a POI, a hut, etc.) that have to be tracked:

Teaser: a small excerpt of an object’s data, e.g. including only the title, a thumbnail image and a category icon
Detail view: more or all details about an object like the text descriptions, the length, duration and difficulty of a tour, all images, etc.

Some modules of the Outdooractive API track the views automatically:

FlexView API: all teaser and detail views are automatically tracked
GeomLayer: standard info windows are automatically tracked as teasers
PDF Download

You have to take care of content tracking in all other cases.

Embed the Outdooractive Tracking API:

<script type="text/javascript" 
        src="https://api-oa.com/jscr/crr.js?proj=api-dev-oa"></script>

Note: put your API project key as value of http get parameter `proj`

Then call one of these two methods to track a teaser or detail view on your web page:

// For a teaser view (snippet)
oacrr.track( "teaser", "2348729"  ); 

// For a detail view (e.g. the detailed page of a tour)
oacrr.track( "detail", "2348729"  );

Both methods optionally accepts an array of IDs. This allows to track e.g. multiple teaser views at once:

oacrr.track( "teaser", ["123456", "2348729" ] );
oacrr.track( "detail", ["123456", "2348729" ] );

Note: The Outdooractive FlexView API tracks all teaser views and detail views out-of-the-box. You have to invoke the tracking code if you are building custom detail views using the Data API and/or the Map API.

Note: Tracking must be integrated in native apps. Please get in touch with your Outdooractive Project Manager to get more information about this use case.

The following examples from Outdooractive API modules show teaser views. All custom implementations of info windows, list entries and other teasers have to call the tracking API.

Teaser Example: large info window

Teaser Example: small info window

Teaser Example: list entry

Teaser Example: gallery snippet

Note: All PDF, GPX and KML Downloads have to be tracked.

All requests to the Outdooractive GPX and KML download Urls are tracked automatically:

GPX and KML Download

You have to track GPX and KML Downloads if you deliver the download files from your server:

oacrr.track( "GPX", "2348729" );
oacrr.track( "KML", "2348729" );

The Outdooractive PDF documents are only availabe through the PDF download API which tracks PDF downloads automatically:

PDF Download

Search Engine Indexing

It is your responsibility to take care of search engine indexing:

Your content may be indexed by search engines.
Content of other sources (user groups) must not be indexed by search engines.

Wether an object may be indexed by search engines is listed in the attribute “robots” of the element “meta”:

<tour id="1373438" type="5143" frontendtype="tour" ranking="64.0">

  <!-- ... -->

  <meta robots="noindex">

    <!-- ... -->

  </meta>

</tour>

Please implement these two rules to make sure that a page or an ajax snippet does not get indexed:

robots.txt: add a disallow rule for the relevant pages
page meta tags: add a “noindex” meta tag to the html header of the relevant pages

User-agent: *
Disallow: /path-to-relevant-pages/

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

If your web pages loads snippets or detail views asynchroniously with via Javascript (outside the Outdooractive Javascript API) you have to do the following:

robots.txt: add a disallow rule for the snippet urls
http headers: add

User-agent: *
Disallow: /path-to-relevant-ajax-snippets/

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

Note: The Outdooractive FlexView API takes care of search engine indexing out-of-the-box. You have to make sure that content of other sources are not indexed by search engines if you are building custom detail views using the Data API and/or the Map API.

Synchronizing

You have to keep your project content up to date:

synchronize daily
- implement differential updates to save system load and bandwidth
- Read our best practice synchronisation article
or request your data on the fly
- e.g. for result lists and detail pages

Note: Your data stays up to date if you are using the Outdooractive FlexView API. You have to make sure that your data is updated daily if you are building custom detail views using the Data API and/or the Map API.

Terms and Conditions

The general Outdooractive Platform Terms and Conditions may be found here:

Outdooractive platform - Terms and Conditions

The guidelines described in this section help you to fulfill the Outdooractive API Terms and Conditions:

Outdooractive API - Terms and Conditions