Watching a vibrant, diverse community of mapmakers and storytellers embrace story maps has been an incredible experience. Collectively, you all have created thousands of amazing pieces with the classic story map templates, often making more than 1,500 new stories in a single day!
But we know there’s more we can do to help you take your stories to new heights, which is why we’ve started building Esri’s new and improved storytelling platform: ArcGIS StoryMaps.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, though, and neither will this new product—especially if we want to get it right. So, until we’re confident this new tool meets and exceeds everything you came to love about the classic Esri Story Maps, the two products will exist side by side.
ArcGIS StoryMaps is currently released in its beta phase, which represents a fraction of the full functionality we’re envisioning for the final product. We want to give you the ability to take it for a spin early on and let us know if you think we’re headed in the right direction, or if there are some places where we need to head back to the drawing board.
During beta, you should consider the new builder as a laboratory where you try new things and tell us what does (or doesn’t) meet your needs. You should not rely on it to create published content that you want to share with a broader audience. Keep relying on classic templates like you normally would to meet this need.
After the general release, you’re welcome to start creating shareable content with ArcGIS StoryMaps. In fact, we encourage you to do so! But you’ll probably notice some features only exist in the classic templates. Give us time, and we’ll get those capabilities in the new product.
In the interim, you should feel free to use the classic templates as much as you need. They’ll be around for years to come, and we’ll communicate early and often when the time to sunset them draws near.
You can learn more about our vision for ArcGIS StoryMaps here.