A click on the map no longer adds a waypoint straight away. It drops a
pin and asks: choose “Add waypoint here” to keep it, or Cancel to drop
it. A stray click on the map now costs nothing.
The zoom buttons on the map are visible. They were there all along,
but they were drawn as a white button on a white plate, so against the
map they had no edge you could see — the contrast between the button
and the map behind it was 1.3 to 1, where the standard asks for 3 to 1.
They now use the same plate as the buttons on a route page, and keep
their outline when you reach them with the keyboard.
When publishing is refused because a photo has no description or a
link has no web address, the editor is more use than it was. Opening
the waypoint it named now marks the fields that need attention, rather
than leaving you to check each one. And if more waypoints have the
same problem, the message says how many are left, so a second refusal
tells you whether you are making progress.
WordPress plugin in the plugin directory
The Coverground plugin has been reviewed and approved by the
WordPress.org plugin team, and is now listed in the
WordPress plugin directory.
You can install it from your own WordPress admin: go to Plugins, choose
Add New, and search for Coverground. New versions arrive through the
usual WordPress updates. What the plugin does is described in the
entry of 4 September.
One thing changed on the way. A card now only uses the cover photo
copied into your media library. Before, if the copy failed, the card
loaded the photo from Coverground instead, so your visitors' browsers
contacted our servers. Now the card is built without an image, and
the editor shows a warning with a button to try again. The terms and
conditions and the privacy statement now also cover using the plugin.
Text alternatives, and a new look
Every image in the app now either carries a text alternative or is
marked as decoration, so a screen reader reads the ones that mean
something and skips the ones that do not. That covers the dashboard,
the blocks inside a waypoint, the printable route and the walk page.
Where a description was missing, the app now asks you for it rather
than inventing one.
Two things on the walk page were saying less than they meant to. The
sentence describing a shortcut dropped the point where the shortcut
rejoins the route, which is the one thing you need in order to decide
whether to take it. It says so again.
On the sign-in and sign-up pages, the boxes you type in had borders
too faint to make out against the page — enough to be a problem if
you have low vision, and easy to miss if you do not. They are now
drawn at the contrast the guidelines ask for. When a form comes back
with a mistake in it, the summary at the top is given focus so that
it is read out; that now also shows a visible outline, so a sighted
keyboard user can see where they have landed.
The rest is appearance. This site has a new front page and structure,
and the sign-in and sign-up pages and the emails we send now use the
same design. The image that shows up when someone shares a
Coverground link had been left behind on the old logo, and now
carries the current one.
Publishing needs a step-free path
A route can now only be published once a step-free path has been
found between its waypoints. Until now the builder told you the path
used steps or rough ground and left the rest to you. Everywhere a
visitor meets a published route it is presented as accessible, so
publishing one that is not would send a wheelchair or pram user onto
stairs under an accessible label.
If publishing is blocked, move a waypoint so the route can go around
the steps or the rough ground — the waypoint editor has a field for
moving a point to an address. Only the route's own path is held to
this. Shortcuts you add yourself are shortcuts over that path, and
are not.
The notice on the path itself now names the consequence as well,
instead of leaving you to find it at the publish switch. It also no
longer suggests adding an alternative segment, which could never fix
this: an alternative is a shortcut over a step-free path, so it
assumes the very thing that is missing.
The other reasons publishing can be blocked now say what they are.
All four used to show the same message about missing descriptions on
waypoint photos, so three times out of four you were sent to the
wrong place. They now name the one that applies — the plan limit, a
cover photo without a description, or a shortcut with no route
generated yet — and where to fix it.
Privacy statement
Coverground now has a
privacy statement, in
Dutch and English. The terms and conditions referred to it as being
prepared; it is there now.
It is written per situation rather than as one list, because what we
hold depends entirely on which of the three you are: someone with an
account, someone following a route, or someone reading this website.
Following a route needs no account and asks nothing of you — your
location and compass direction stay on your device, the map and the
arrival detection run in your browser, and we never receive a
coordinate. Map tiles come from our own servers, so browsing the map
does not tell anyone else where you are looking.
It also names the one thing we cannot switch off: the mail service we
use adds an invisible image to the messages it sends for us, which
reports that a message was opened. We have not found a way to
disable it, so the statement says where it is and how to block it
from your side.
Terms and conditions updated
We have updated the
terms and conditions.
Most of the document is unchanged. One section, on your content,
now says two things it did not say before.
The permission you give us to host your routes, texts and photos
and show them to the people you share them with is now described
as a permission and, where one is needed, a licence. What we do
with your content has not changed: we host it and show it to the
people you share it with, and nothing else. Your content stays
yours.
The section also now states that you indemnify Coverground against
claims by third parties about your content. This is new. It matters
if someone else claims rights over something you upload — a photo
you did not take, for instance — so it is worth reading before you
publish content you did not make yourself.
What each plan includes
Plans used to differ only in how many routes you can publish. They
now also differ in features, so it is worth stating what is where —
see plans and prices.
The free plan covers two published routes, the route builder, route
pages, the embed code, QR codes and the WordPress plugin. A paid
plan adds more routes, visitor statistics, your own logo instead of
the Coverground one, and a public page listing all your routes.
Showing a route on your own website is not part of what you pay for,
on any plan. Anyone can link to a route, so the tidy ways of doing
it — the embed code and the WordPress plugin — stay open to
everyone.
WordPress plugin
There is now a Coverground plugin for WordPress. It adds a
Coverground route block: connect your account once, pick one of your
published routes, and the block builds a card with the cover photo,
the title, a line of facts and a button to the route.
The card is made of ordinary WordPress blocks, so you can restyle it,
rewrite it or add your own blocks to it. It follows your theme, and
the cover photo is copied into your media library — so your pages
keep working even when Coverground is unreachable, and even if you
remove the plugin later.
A daily check tells you in the WordPress admin when a route changed
after you placed its card, and when a card points to a route that is
no longer published. Cards are never rewritten for you; reloading one
is a button you press.
The plugin works on every plan, including the free one.
Plans and billing
Coverground now has paid plans: Free with 2 published routes,
Standard with 10, and Plus with 25 — see
plans and prices.
Need more routes, or technical support? Email
hi@coverground.eu
for a custom plan.
You choose and pay on the billing page in your account; payment runs
through Mollie, a European payment provider. An upgrade applies
immediately, with unused time on the old plan credited. A downgrade
waits until the period you paid for ends. Either way, you see what it
costs — or what it means for your published routes — before you confirm.
Every payment comes with an invoice, attached to the confirmation
mail and downloadable from the billing page.
If a payment fails, your routes keep working for a month while we
send reminders. Only after that do they show visitors a short
unavailable notice — with a link to your own website — and we count
the visitors that were turned away, so you know what it is costing
you. A completed payment brings everything back immediately.
Steer the route with via points
The path between two stops is picked automatically. When you want it
to go a particular way — through the park rather than along the road —
you can now turn a point into a via point: it shapes the route, and
visitors never see it. Any point can become one, except the first and
last, which are always stops.
Via points get their own marker in the builder, and stops renumber
automatically when a point changes role.
When a stop can't be connected
Sometimes there is no step-free path to a stop — a viewpoint up a
flight of stairs, a bench deep in the dunes. The builder now says so
instead of failing. If a path exists only over steps or unpaved
ground, the route is drawn anyway and marked as not accessible, so
you can move a stop, or add that stretch as a less-accessible
option, to change that.
If a stop can't be reached at all, the builder names it and suggests
moving it closer to a street or path — and when it finds a street
nearby, one button moves the stop there for you.
A quieter walk page
The walk page showed three lines that all said where you were heading and
how far it was. It now shows one: the stop you are heading to, with the
guidance underneath. Screen reader users still hear the guidance as full
sentences, unchanged. The label “current target” now reads “heading here”,
and the wording fits cycling routes too.
The page now follows your browser's language unless you pick one with the
switcher: a Dutch visitor on an English-language route gets Dutch buttons
and guidance, with a note that the stops themselves are written in English.
The language switcher is available on every step, and switching mid-walk
returns you to where you were.
On iPhone and iPad, location can be blocked in the device settings even
after you allow it in the browser. The permission step now explains where
to find that setting. It also gained a Try again button, on every device,
so you no longer need to reload the page after turning location on.
In dark mode, the map is lighter: streets, water and parks are easier to
tell apart. The route line itself is unchanged.
Walk a route in your own order
Out on a route, the arrow and the spoken guidance always pointed at the next
stop in order. Now, opening a stop's information makes it your destination:
the arrow turns, the distance follows, and the guidance tells you where
you're heading. There's nothing extra to press — opening a stop is the
choice. Arriving anywhere hands guidance back to the route, so there's no
mode to remember or leave.
Because the route now follows the direction you are actually walking, you can
walk it backwards. Start at the far end, walk to the stop before it, and from
there it keeps offering you the next one on its own. You can also head back to
a stop you have already visited; it will guide you there, and the visit is
still counted only once.
A route you preview before publishing now says it is a draft, on the opening
card and while you walk it, so it is clear the link is not live yet.
Your own icon, and a page with all your routes
Two additions, available to beta subscribers on request — email
beta@coverground.eu. When a visitor
adds one of your routes to their phone's home screen, the icon can now be
yours instead of the Coverground one — upload it under Settings.
You can also switch on a page that lists everything you have published, with
a picture, a description and the distance, number of stops and whether it is
a round trip. One address to share when you want to point at all your routes
rather than one.
Sharing and publishing in one place
A Share and publish panel now holds the publish switch, the public link, the
QR code and the embed code together. Until now the switch lived in Route
settings while the QR code and embed code were only on the routes list, so
sharing what you had just built meant leaving the builder.
Route settings save as you type, like the rest of the builder. The Save and
Cancel buttons are gone — Cancel never undid anything anyway.
A new route now starts on the map: click to place your first stop and the
route is created for you, instead of a dialog asking for a name before you
can do anything. Rename it whenever you like, from the toolbar.
Start from a GPX file
Already recorded the route on a watch, a phone or a route planner? Upload the
GPX file and Coverground places the stops for you, names them after the
nearest street, and draws a step-free route between them. You add the stories
and photos.
After importing you get a summary of what was made: how many stops, over what
distance, and — when the step-free route differs noticeably from your file —
by how much and why, since we route around stairs and rough surfaces. If it
took a turn you did not want, adding a stop along that stretch pulls it back.
The builder toolbar also gained a View link, which opens the route page in a
new tab exactly as a visitor sees it.
A map-first route builder
Building a route now happens on a full-screen map. The list of stops has
become a panel that floats over the map, so you can open it when you need
it and close it when you'd rather see more of the route. It stays the
keyboard and screen-reader path to every stop, and remembers whether you
left it open.
Editing a stop opens a panel beside the map instead of covering it. The
stop you're editing slides into the part of the map that stays visible, so
you can see where you are while you write. Closing it returns the map to
the view you had before.
Publishing moved into Route settings, where it's now a switch, with a
confirmation before a published route goes back to draft. The toolbar shows
whether a route is published or a draft. There's no Save button any more:
the builder saves as you work.
QR codes for published routes
Every published route can now be downloaded as a QR code from the route
list, as an SVG that stays sharp at any print size — on a sign at the
starting point, a flyer or a museum label. Scanning it opens the walk page.
Visits that arrive by QR code are counted separately in the route's
statistics, so you can see how much a printed sign is being used. This
needs no query string and no cookie.
More accurate statistics
Daily figures are now grouped by local time rather than UTC, so an evening
walk counts on the day it actually happened, and a walk that crosses
midnight is only counted once.
A walk that gets interrupted — the phone locks, the page reloads — now
continues as the same walk instead of being recorded as a second one. Stops
passed while the screen was off are counted once the walker turns up
further along the route.
Less-accessible options, for those who want them
Every route is generated to be step-free and walkable by everyone. But some places offer an alternative that isn't for
everyone: a staircase that cuts a corner, a steep slope, a narrow passage.
Route builders can now add these as alternative options, drawn on the map
and labelled with what makes them less accessible.
On the walk page they stay out of the way until a visitor chooses "Show
less-accessible options" on the map. The accessible route remains the
default for everyone.
Route statistics
Every route now has a statistics page: how many people open the route, how many
start walking, how far they get stop by stop, and how many finish. The
numbers update daily.
It's counting, not tracking — anonymous tallies only. Your visitors'
location never leaves their device, there are no tracking cookies and no
profiles, and the walk page now says so in plain words.
A sharper map
The map — in the builder, on walk pages and in embedded cards — is now
drawn from vector tiles, so it stays crisp at every zoom level and on
every screen.
Finer control over stops and embeds
Move an existing stop by searching for an address — a keyboard-friendly alternative to dragging it across the map.
Set each stop's arrival radius (5–500 m) to decide how close is "you've arrived".
The embedded route card got a cleaner layout that fits its frame exactly, and Coverground branding on the card now appears on free plans only.
The route list shows each route's content language, and the account page is now Settings, with general and security sections.
Dutch and English
Coverground now speaks both Dutch and English. The whole interface is available in
either language with a switcher, and every route declares the language its own
content is written in — so a route reads in its own language by default, wherever
it's shared or embedded.
Account security
Two-factor authentication is now optional — turn it on when you want it,
from the Security page in your account. Passwords are held to a stronger
standard too: at least 12 characters, and checked against known data
breaches so a compromised password can't be reused here.
Walking a route, improved
Out on a route, Coverground now guides you from stop to stop: it shows the distance
to the next stop and tells you when you've arrived. Tap any stop — in the list or on
the map — to read its story without leaving the page. Re-center on your location
or the next stop, or zoom out to the whole route. On a phone, the guidance sits in
a panel you can collapse to free up the map. Your progress is remembered as you walk.
Embeddable route cards
Put a published route straight on your own site: paste a short snippet and a compact
card appears, linking through to the full walk page. You can place more than one on
a page, and cards show only on the websites you've approved — nothing loads anywhere
else.
First public beta release
Coverground replaces an empty, white page on the domain name. This first release lets you:
build a guided walking or cycling route from your own stops and stories;
share each route as its own page;
walk it step by step in the browser, with a text interface that works with a screen reader.
Routes are generated to be step-free and walkable by everyone. Your location stays
on your device, Coverground and its data are hosted in Europe, and accounts can be
secured with two-factor authentication.