About MagpieAlert.com

This season we have seen a massive interest in our national community website, magpiealert.com so here's some further information.

Aim of the website

Is simply by recording our magpie swoops on a map we can all help others to avoid the dangerous birds. The website also gathers information on the attack: the position (lat/long), a description, date/time, what activity was taking place and whether an injury resulted.

How did it all get started?

Well it all started a couple of years ago in 2013 after getting swooped whilst out on my bike. I got home and started searching the internet for information on attack prevention and perhaps somewhere I could register the attack.

I found a number of websites, mostly local government sites warning about magpies. I then came across the odd cycling club website with magpie swoops recorded, but nothing in my area and nothing across Australia.

So the idea of www.magpiealert.com was born as a place where anyone across Australia can come and register their swoops to pre-warn others.

All about me

Well I'm Jon Clark, a forty something, cough, husband to Mrs. Clark and father to 9 year old twins (Matthew & Lucy).

I've been building commercial websites since '96 - yes websites go back that far back in time kids, albeit they were a bit grey then! My current full-time day job is now as an IT Manager for a large Australian Supermarket based in Sydney..

I'm a bit geeky and passionate about the Internet. I loved designing & building this website and glad to use my technical skills to give something back to our community.

I love cycling, and have done since my first bike from Father Christmas in the mid 70's! I'm a keen runner too, although I mainly do it to help keep up with the twins!

I fund magpiealert.com myself which is why this year I'm asking for your kind donations to help keep the service running - As magpiealert becomes more and more popular then so does the demand for the service along with an increasing running costs.

What's new with the website in 2015?

This year I spent 3 months of evenings redesigning and building a new magpiealert.com, although if you ask my good wife then she'd say that I did it to avoid watching MKR, followed by House Rules and The Bachelor..

So what's new?

Given it a new look - Obvious if you saw the old one
I've made it more mobile friendly and with a "responsive" design using Zurbs Foundation 5 framework
Provided social registration so you can sign-up with your facebook, twitter and Google accounts which gives you:

By signing up you are given a more personalised home page showing a map with swoops local to your chosen area
You can choose to be alerted by email when we receive a swoop in your area too
You can comment on each others swoops and stories
You can even add your own stories and tips to help others
And choose to have your own attacks posted to your own facebook timeline or Tweet them too
Each swoop's details can now be displayed on a separate page along with it's own google map. I did this to help you share them on facebook, twitter etc

I vet/approve each swoop manually for bad language and cranks and have created the functionality so they automatically get posted to our magpiealert facebook and twitter pages

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