Geo Mapping in WordPress Blogs
I use maps (gis) for tagging blog posts, adding pictures to posts, mapping my walks or runs, for writing travelogues and general map related experimentation.
For a while I have been searching for maps utility to use it on my blog. For a long time its been embedding either Google Maps or Open Street Maps. They are great, specially now that you can embed the highly customizable maps using Google Map Engline or GeoJson.IO or ESRI maps.
But I wanted much more native utility and I also wanted to own my data. And hence my requirement kind of boiled down to a good wordpress plugin. A plugin that stores the data on my servers, supports multiple maps, is flexible, is mobile friendly and highly customizable.
Then by chance I came across MapsMaker. It has an amazing set of features for any kind of user. The defaults work for novice user and there is huge amount customization available for advanced user.
Some of my favorite features are
- Can import GPX and shows the stats like speed etc, specially useful for running tracks
- Supports Open Street Maps
- Has driving direction built in
- Can export as GeoJSON, KML etc
- GIS update API (Lets say you want to update a map with your present status)
- Full screen mode
Example usage of plugin:
Looks responsive at the outset, but after trying to zoom in and out, I noticed a lag in losing of markers (it could very well be my phone which is the problem). But the cost factor seems high. I’ve had the necessity to put maps on my travelogue, but my requirements were very simple (no route plotting).
I am sure there are open source alternates, which will come at the cost of you spending time to customize most of it (like how I ended up doing).