GeoContent Plus Maps

This chapter describes the three ways you can place maps on your website pages using GeoContent Plus and how to configure them.

For each map you can choose one of the available map types (map renderers):

• Google Maps
• OpenLayers Maps
• Olwidget Maps (also based on OpenLayers but with more configuration options)

Overview maps

Overview maps can show all your GeoContent Items in a single map. They are generated directly from the GeoContent Plus component and for this reason they need a menu item of type “GeoContent Plus Overview”. There are three kinds of Overview maps menu items: one for each Map renderers.

Procedure

To add an overview map, you must create a new Joomla! menu item from Joomla! control panel (Menu‣Name of your menu‣New) and choose one of the GeoContent Plus menu types as menu type:

The GeoContent Plus menu type

Overview maps configuration

All parameters are read by default from the Global Configuration but can also be overridden in the menu item’s parameters tabs:

Some configuration parameters can also be manually set in the query string, for example to set the default base layer you could load the page as http://www.yoursite.com/?option=com_geocontent&default_base_layer=google.streets, check Tag maps parameters for a list of parameters accepted from the query string.

For the detailed list of the different configuration parameters available for the Map renderers, please refer to fe_configuration.

Tip

You can make an overview map your home page: just set it as “default” in Joomla! Menu‣Main Menu.

Automatic maps

Automatic maps are generated directly by the Content plugin (which of course must be installed and enabled), the plugin must be configured to show automatic maps.

Procedure

1. Install and publish Content plugin (if not done already)
2. Configure the plugin to show automatic maps

Tip

You can block the automatic map generation on selected articles by inserting in the article’s body

{gcmapskip}

Automatic maps configuration

Configuration parameters of the automatic maps are taken directly from the component’s globalconfiguration.

Tag maps

Tag maps are generated directly by the Content plugin (which must be installed and enabled) by substitution of a particular string that you can insert in the article body.

The following string will be substituted with a GeoContent Plus map when encountered in the text.

{geocontent}

Procedure

Tag maps configuration

Tag maps can be configured with Key-Value-Pairs parameters in the tag itself, not all parameters are available in tag maps, for a detailed list of parameters and their accepted values see Tag maps parameters.

To apply a configuration parameter to a tag you must use the following syntax:

{geocontent param_name=|value|}

you can specify multiple parameters separating them with spaces:

{geocontent param1_name=|value| param2_name=|value|}