Recently I had a customer who needed a responsive Google Map with multiple location markers. That’s when I found WP Google Maps. I found the plugin easy to use and fairly intuitive. Because my client needed multiple maps with images, I chose the pro version, which was just $19.99 for up to 3 sites and lifetime updates.
First, create your map
With the pro version, I was able to create multiple maps.
General Settings: As you can see from the image above, I set the width to 100% so it would be responsive and set the height I wanted.
Themes: Then you have a choice of themes, which can make the maps different colors, but I used the default.
Directions: Next, because I chose the pro plugin, I was able to offer directions to each map location, which is a great feature.
Store Locator: I chose not to use the store locator with mine, but again, a really nice option.
Advanced Settings: This allows you to choose a default image marker (pro version), the type of map (Road, Satellite, Terrain or Hybrid), if you want to show the user’s location, whether you want to add layers to show traffic, weather, etc, and an option of how you want your info window popup box to display.
Marker Listing Options: Next, you can choose how to display how your markers will show in a list below the map. You can choose several options including having nothing showing at all and choose how to order the markers listing.
Categories
You can set up as many categories as you like and select the maps you want them to be assigned to. You can also have a custom marker per category.
Next, you’re ready to add your map markers
As you can see above, you have places to enter
title, address (either through address, lat & long, or just by right clicking the map), a description, the picture that will be attached to the marker, any link url, a custom marker, a category (the categories you see here are some I had predefined), animation of the marker (none, bounce or drop), and if you want the info window open by default.
I liked being able to upload my picture right from this interface, but I wanted my link url to be a PDF that I uploaded, so it was a little awkward having to go out to the media library to upload the pdf and then copy the link url from there. (I solved this a little by keeping two windows of the dashboard open – one for the maps and one for the media library.)
One thing to note is that by default, the image that you upload is set to the thumbnail size, so my images kept displaying much smaller than I wanted. I solved this problem by changing the default size of my thumbnails in my Dashboard under Settings > Media.
As you can see, it is also set up to accept polygons and polylines, although I didn’t use this feature myself.
I also loved the search option above the marker listings that allows you to search by key words to find just the listing your are looking for.
Settings
There are even more global settings that allow you to choose a bunch of defaults for your maps including what the lowest level of user that can access the maps in the backend.
Advanced
There is also an option to download all marker data to a CSV file or upload from one.
See it in action
Here’s the site I created for my client:
http://www.rockcitymedia.net/coverage-maps/orange-county/
Summary
Overall, I highly recommend this plugin. It’s super easy to customize and gives you lots of different options. The pro version wasn’t very expensive and it was nice to have more options, but you may not need them.
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