Tue

Sep 19
2006

Brady Forrest

Brady Forrest

GeoPress Adds Maps to WordPress

GeoPress is a plugin that makes it easy to embed locations and maps in a WordPress blog - without having to code! It was previewed last week at FOSS4G and v1.0 was released today at EuroOSCON in Brussels.

As evidenced by the remarkable adoption of geocoding in Flickr (over 4 million photos have been geo-tagged in just over 3 weeks) people want to add this data to their content. GeoPress enables that for a WordPress blog. It allows the user to easily add maps and geo-coded locations to their posts. Blog posts can also be organized by location. Embedded locations and addresses are inserted as microformats and are syndicated out in GeoRSS 1.0 (which was finalized and released last week at FOSS4G).

As with all wordpress plugins drop it in the wp-plugins directory and then activate it from the WordPress web interface. The plugins settings allow you to choose map size, map provider (Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft), and enable GeoRSS 1.0 (just released last week at FOSS4G). The plugin uses the Yahoo! Geocoder API so you will need to register an Appid with them. If you choose to use Google Maps then you will need to get a key from them. Microsoft does not require any preregistration to use their maps API. Geopress uses Mapstraction, a very cool Javascript library, to handle switching between map providers.

Developers (and adventurous PHP-spelunkers) can add GeoPress-specific functions to their WordPress themes to display the associated map, address or coordinates.

Currently, the plugin is only supported on the Wordpress platforms. There have already been requests for it to be ported to other blogging platforms. Currently there is only support for points; support for lines will come in future versions. The GeoPress site has a wiki and the file.

The plugin author, Andrew Turner, blogs at highearthorbit.com. He also works on Mapufacture.com with Mikel Maron, who spoke at Where 2.0 and FOSS4G about GeoRSS. Pay attention to these two; they are working on some great projects in the neogeographer space.

Right now the most obviously useful part of this plugin is the ability to easily add maps and locations to your blog posts. In the future, it will be the GeoRSS output. As the number of GeoRSS feeds grow (Flickr, Upcoming, Platial already have them) there will be more sites like Mapufacture that will consume GeoRSS feeds and the ability to create feed-driven maps will increase in demand. As Andrew puts it in his presentation, "If you build it, they will publish".

Click through for screenshots.

An embedded map in a blog post:
gp-post.jpg


The plugin interface for creating the map:
gp-writepost.jpg


The plugin interface for editing locations:
gp-locations.jpg


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Comments: 27

  Anders Dahnielson [09.19.06 03:38 PM]

It's not a very good launch when you can't download the plugin. Clicking on the download link in trac return a "403 Access forbidden" page. Well, there's always svn...

  J David [09.20.06 05:20 AM]

The download seems to be working just fine. This thing is pretty cool.

  Polskaya [09.20.06 03:17 PM]

Hi, I am testing this plugin, and in the plugin interface, on the page 'locations', I get an error that a table wp_geopress does not exist.
I have full access and rights to my database, and pasword and login are correct. It seems that GeoPress simply doesn't create this table.
Do you have any advice for me please? Thx in advance

  Mikel [09.21.06 07:25 AM]

Wanted to add that this plugin was based on the original GeoPress work of Ravi Dronamraju




Thanks for the launch announcement Brady!



-Mikel

  Andrew [09.22.06 09:17 AM]

Hi Polskaya - have you tried deactivating & reactivating the plugin? Perhaps there was some error on your system when it was trying to setup. GeoPress does create and maintain the database table for you. No underlying configuration is required.

  Alex [09.26.06 12:30 PM]

Is there a way to use it not only for posts but for pages as well?

  Andrew [09.26.06 03:08 PM]

Alex - Great suggestion. I just added this functionality to GeoPress, which is in the source repository. It will be included in the next release, v2.2, later this week.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

  Andrew [10.09.06 01:10 PM]

Hi Remco - the Locations tab doesn't currently have the ability to add new locations. This is done when you write a new Post by entering a location, or clicking the map, and also adding a "Save Name" if you want it to show up in the drop box.

In a future version we will add the ability to make new locations in the Options tab, or to upload Geo data from GPX, GeoRSS, KML.

Thanks for the feedback!

  jp [10.09.06 03:37 PM]

great plugin, thanks.
I cannot get a map with all of the locations to work. Am I right putting geopress_map(height, width, num_locs) in a page? If it was in a template it would be on every page wouldn't it?

it's working great for each post.

thanks again. it's late here, i'll have another look at it in the morning.

  graham [10.14.06 04:41 PM]

Great piece of work, thanks. Like jp I'm having trouble getting the georpess_mapfunction to work in a template. I'm calling it thus:

which should return all locations but returns nothing. I have the 2.1 release installed.

  graham [10.15.06 06:54 AM]

Ok, sussed it. It works ok if you call echo geopress_map(h,w,n). JP, I created a specific template to use for a map display page, just a very simple one, would seem to be the way to go.

  Andrew [10.15.06 10:15 AM]

Good point Graham & JP - GeoPress *returns* the output from the template functions. This lets you perform any processing you may want to do on the text before displaying it.

As Graham points out, you will want to "echo" for any of the template functions. I have added this useful tidbit of information to the Documentation page.

  Ralph [10.24.06 11:26 PM]

I just played around with the plugin and wanted to ask, if the following is even possible:

A frined of mine tours Asia at the moment and i set up and maintain a blog for him. Hi occassionally writes blog posts in form of Newsletters after visiting 1 to 4 cities. So one post would/should have 1 to 4 coordinates. I know, that this is not directly what the plugin is intended for - one post with multiple coordinates - but could it be done with the plugin in its current release?

Thanks for your help...

  Andrew [10.25.06 04:45 AM]

--
By the way, in the future you can leave comments and feature suggestions on the GeoPress trac at: http://georss.org/trac/trac.cgi/wiki/GeoPress

or email: geopress@highearthorbit.com
--

Hi Ralph,
GeoPress doesn't currently support that functionality, and it really isn't part of the current GeoRSS spec. - but the plan in the future is to support more complex sets of points, lines, and areas like you point out.

Right now, your friend could have multiple WordPress entries, one for each city location.

Andrew

  Andrew [10.25.06 05:38 AM]

--
By the way, in the future you can leave comments and feature suggestions on the GeoPress trac at: http://georss.org/trac/trac.cgi/wiki/GeoPress

or email: geopress@highearthorbit.com
--

Hi Ralph,
GeoPress doesn't currently support that functionality, and it really isn't part of the current GeoRSS spec. - but the plan in the future is to support more complex sets of points, lines, and areas like you point out.

Right now, your friend could have multiple WordPress entries, one for each city location.

Andrew

  http://efficacylevitra.info [03.25.07 05:02 AM]

Right now, your friend could have multiple WordPress entries, one for each city location. http://pharmacyphentermine.info

  http://efficacylevitra.info [03.25.07 05:04 AM]

GeoPress doesn't currently support that functionality

  Rod [04.08.07 12:21 AM]

Wow! This is really nice work. This is a fantastic plug-in, one of the best ever made. If you need google maps on your site--look no further.

Well done and thank you soooooooooooo much.

  Dubai Holidays [05.31.07 09:02 AM]

Hi

I've been experimenting with using googlemapas on wordpress which has bought me here, but I simply can'd find the download link.

Any clues?
Thanks

  chuck [06.26.07 01:44 AM]

I can't download this either, when I go to georss.org/trac/trac.cgi/wiki/GeoPress

I get the following
Not Found

The requested URL /trac/trac.cgi/wiki/GeoPress was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

If I go to the georss.org homepage I get:
GeoRSS

We're currently migrating the GeoRSS site to new servers. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the meantime, here are some examples in case you need a reference.
GeoRSS Simple

So what I'm looking for is someone that can email me this plugin or provide an alternate download location...

thanks

  Andrew TUrner [07.02.07 12:12 PM]

Hi chuck - sorry about that, we had an "unforseen" server outage.

You can download GeoPress for WordPress or MovableType from the GeoPress page:

http://georss.org/geopress

  Steve [08.12.07 12:01 PM]

Thank you so much for this plugin - exactly what I was looking for! I am due to set off on my second Round the World trip in November and I intend to maintain a daily travelogue again for the old folks, family, friends and the curious. I've just been customising my first entry and have successfully added an embeeded map with my first location: right outside my front door! :) Thanks again for all your hard work, I shall send you a postcard :)

  blogshowoff [09.04.07 10:06 AM]

really good plugin...going for download now :)

  Phil [09.20.07 12:26 PM]

Cracking plugin. Love the examples. I'm struggling to get this to stick to aerial view by default rather than maps. Anyone had the same problems?
Keep up the good work.

  matt [12.27.07 10:10 AM]

The link is a dead link, and I looked on the website and they don't seem to offer the plugin anymore

  jocuri [06.27.08 01:20 PM]

Thanks! This is just what I been searching for!

  Donna | The New Zealand Site [10.11.08 05:12 PM]

The link to Geopress in the first sentence returns a 404 error. Is there another way to download it?

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