Custom Track URL

[Helen Li]

Hi,

I'm trying to upload a custom track and I've been doing so by uploading my BED files. But how do I get a URL for my custom tracks so I can share/upload into my trackhub?

Thanks,

Helen

[Jonathan Casper]

Hello Helen,

Thank you for your question about getting a URL for your custom tracks so you can add them into your track hub. Unfortunately, UCSC does not provide URLs to custom track data for track hubs. You will need to find your own web hosting space to provide a URL for your data if you would like to add it to a track hub (and your BED files will need to be converted to bigBed format - see http://genome.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/help/hgTrackHubHelp.html#Setup).

On the other hand, we do provide links so that you can share a saved session with custom track data that you have loaded. First, upload your custom track to the UCSC Genome Browser. Second, from the top menu select "My Data" >> "Sessions". Next, scroll down to the "Save Settings" section, enter a name for your session, make sure that the "allow this session to be loaded by others" box is checked, and click submit. You will need to have an account on the UCSC Genome Browser to do this. If you do not have one, just click the "Create an account" link at the top of the page and follow the steps.

You should now see your named session listed under the "My Sessions" heading of the page. Under the "link to session" subheading, there will be a link titled "Browser". Copy the link address (e.g., http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?hgS_doOtherUser=submit&hgS_otherUserName=jcasper&hgS_otherUserSessionName=hg19%2Dsample), and send it to anyone you would like to share your custom track with. When they follow that link, they will be presented with a view of the UCSC Genome Browser that includes your custom track with the position and track settings that you had when you saved the session.

I hope this is helpful. If you have any further questions, please reply to gen...@soe.ucsc.edu or genome...@soe.ucsc.edu. Questions sent to those addresses will be archived in publicly-accessible forums for the benefit of other users. If your question contains sensitive data, you may send it instead to genom...@soe.ucsc.edu.

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Jonathan Casper
UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group

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