Imagemaps are a built-in function of the Apache Web server used to host your material. Because Apache is a descendant of the NCSA httpd package, imagemap control files are in "NCSA Format" (programs such as Adobe PageMill will ask you this; the other common choice is "Cern Format").
Try the tutorial from NCSA httpd if you are unfamiliar with NCSA style.
Once you have a .map file and an image you wish to use as an imagemap, use the following HTML to implement your imagemap (one of the following should work for your server):
<A HREF="mapfile.map"><IMG SRC="image.gif" ISMAP></A> or <A HREF="http://your_domain/mapfile.map><IMF SRC="image location" ISMAP></A>...where mapfile.map and image.gif are your imagemap control file and image file, respectively. You are not required to use a GIF file, of course.
If there is any problem with your imagemap, the server will usually return a very generic error message. The most common problems causing this are:
- The mapfile isn't a proper text file. This often happens if you transfer the file via FTP from a Macintosh or PC, without specifically setting the "Text" or "ASCII" option. You shouldn't rely on your FTP client to automatically recognize text files and transfer them in the appropriate mode.
- The URLs in the mapfile are relative instead of absolute. An absolute URL always begins with http://.
- The mapfile is in CERN format rather than NCSA, or has some other syntactical error.
Unfortunately, there is very little in the way of diagnostics available from the server. Nothing is generated in the error logs.