What is the Weather Watcher Kit?
The ww_kit is a set of scripts to allow you to display
various local weather widgets on your website.
Is national weather available?
There are two bars that display your choice of cities.
While you could in theory use as many cities as you wished please
take into consideration that by default a php script is
allowed to run for a maximum of 30 seconds. This is enough
time to get anywhere from 5 to 12 or so cities but the
actual number will depend on your servers network status.
Where does the weather data come from?
The US government has weather data freely available at
iwin.nws.noaa.gov and weather.gov for downloading to
use in scripts and applications.
How many different types of displays are there?
To the right is a screen shot of the demo page showing all the basic
widgets.
1.1 Clock Box
The clock widget is java-script driven and displays the weather condition and
temperature along with continuous updated local time.
1.2 Thermometer
The thermometer widget is a sliced graphic that displays the current temperature.
1.3 Local Weather Box
This widget is perfect to display on the index page of
your site. This widget has a conditions graphic and the
temperature and wind.
There is an option to make this widget a java-script slider
that stays in place on the page.
2. Regional Radar Maps
Current radar maps for the entire US. The template
shows a US view and underneath is the US broke into
12 regional thumb-nails. The thumbs link to bare
java-script pop-ups of each region.
3. City Weather Bar
This bar displays the current conditions graphic and
temperature in a neat clean display. Note the conditions
mentioned in the Is national weather available
entry above.
4. City Weather Bar (extended)
This bar is the same as above with the addition of a link
to details in a java-script pop-up window.
5. City Text Widget
This widget is the #3 widget in a text based format.
6. Local Forecast
Text based extended forecast for your local area. This
forecast is for the same area as widget #1.
7. Data template
This is a template displaying all the entries for a
particular location. This information is formatted the
same for all US locations. These are the variables
available in making your own templates.
How hard is this to set-up?
The set-up for the Weather Kit is fairly easy. All that is
needed is to spend a few minutes surfing the links
provided in the documentation to get the codes you will
need to use to identify your location.
The just unzip and upload. Edit a few config files with
your web-sites path and url information. You also need to
set-up a cron job to automate the gathering of weather
data. But dont worry, we show you what you need to do step
by step in the documentation.
How can I learn more?
Read the documentation.
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