diannevolek's picture

At the Live meetup, we talked through the easiest modules to get live maps. It is really easy compared to D7 (especially when you have help!)

MODULES TO BE INSTALLED

  • Geofields
  • Leaflet
  • Leaflet Widget for Geofield
  • GeoIP Tokens (sets the map to the users current location)

1) I created a "Distributor" content type and included a Geofield using leaflet.widget as the widget.  I chose Google Satellite (no API key necessary). Tick "Automatically center map on existing features" (I think this is from GeoIP). I defined more practical Zoom levels (2 to 18, with a default of 10)

2) Under Manage Display, the format is Leaflet.  Bing works, so does Google Roadmap. I will try the others, including the recommend OpenStreet Mapnik.

Important Notes

  • This didn't work in the demo. It turned out to be because if the label is set to "Inline" the map doesn't display.  There is no reason to have the label, so it was probably never tested with it! But that could mean that if you have any floated elements near it, that could cause a problem as well.  Perhaps there is a minimum width?
  • If you are searching the forum for MapQuest because of the cost of the Google API, don't worry, you don't need it. And OpenStreet is very easy as an alternative

Thank you to the Backdrop dev team:  especially Tim for setting up the session, and invaluable advice from  Indigoxela

Comments

indigoxela's picture

This didn't work in the demo. It turned out to be because if the label is set to "Inline" the map doesn't display

@diannevolek, thank you so much for reporting. Correct, I never tried to add an inline label. An issue for that in the module's queue has been opened. I still have to research a bit for the best solution. If you have an advice, don't hesitate to add a comment to the issue (or here).

I saw this demo today and it's nice. In the past, I've usually done this with with GeoCoder module. With the Geocoder module you can convert addresses to points on a map. I'm told that this does not always work well, depending upon the addresses and where the locations are. However, I've had good success with geocoding addresses in my city. 

Here is a link to a tutorial on how I've accomplished this:

https://simplo.site/posts/placing-multiple-locations-map-backdrop-cms