GeoPress
O’Reilly Radar was the first to announce the release of GeoPress, a WordPress blog engine plugin that allows you to easily add location to blog posts, embed dynamic maps, and add GeoRSS encoding to your RSS output.
There have been other geo plugins before. However, they usually required you to make your own modifications to your template and provided a fairly arcane interface. The goal of GeoPress was to make adding location as simple as possible. Once you install GeoPress (copy and unzip to a wp-content/plugins/geopress directory on your WordPress site), and activate it (on the plugins panel), your configuration is done. Then go to write a blog post and you’ll see a new area with a map and boxes underneath the post.
You can enter an address, or a city, or just a country, or even click on the map to set the location. You can then add a name which will be saved and can later be used for quick reuse. If you want to insert a map into your post, just type INSERT_.MAP somewhere in your post. You can also use INSERT_.ADDRESS and INSERT_.COORDS, which will insert the address and coordinates, in appropriate adr and geo Microformats. Since GeoPress uses Mapstraction, you can switch between displaying Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft maps with just a quick select in your settings.
There are also some PHP functions for modifying your template to embed maps or post locations. Using geopress_map() you can embed a map of all your locations. the_address() can be used in your post metadata to always automatically output something like “this post was written by Bob from Waikiki, Hawaii”.
Lastly, the part that will be most useful in the future, is that the locations your write about will be embedded as GeoRSS in your RSS feeds. Aggregators like Mapufacture or FoFRedux will now be able to aggregate your geographic data and allow others to easily find interesting places, and build mashups.
Please let me know what you think!
My name is 
September 20th, 2006 at 3:58 am (#)
Great plug-in. Well done.
Is there more documentatio somewhere?
For example:
Is there an option to pick type of google map (Satelitte, hybrid, map) and zoom level - my map keeps using a different zoom than the one I selected in the “write” area. . Sorry can’t seem to see it.
You mention the ability to upload GPX file. Is there more info somewhere on how exactly to do this?
Regards
September 20th, 2006 at 12:23 pm (#)
Good to meet you in Brussels last weekend - well done for getting it out of the door in time, and thanks for using Mapstraction!
One thing I thought would be good for a blogging plugin, that I’ve mentioned to Mikel before, would be to make an interface on a static image API (Yahoo has one) for red-dot maps. That way an image would show up in aggregators and without javascript, and could be swapped out for an interactive map if needed (or only on the post page, perhaps, instead of having 10 Google maps on the front page). Of course, the interactive maps are often overkill anyway, so this would have potential usability benefits.
I’ll be taking a closer look at GeoPress soon, and hopefully I can contribute.
September 20th, 2006 at 11:36 pm (#)
I can’t get Bamako, Mali to show up correctly. When I initially put it into WordPress, it is zoomed out too far and then shows nothing if I use the INSERT_MAP.
Thanks
September 21st, 2006 at 5:14 am (#)
Thanks for all the feedback. These are really great suggestions.
@steve - good question. Right now the macros don’t allow selecting street/sat/zoom - this is being added
@tom - GeoPress actually currently gets the YahooMap image url - but doesn’t replace it for RSS, this is on the list to be added
@greg - The problem is that the GeoPress map is defaulting to Satellite imagery, and there may not be any for Bamako, Mali at that Zoom level. Have you tried Yahoo or Microsoft Map? Also, as steve suggested, I need to add the ability to set Zoom and MapType in the INSERT_MAP.
Actually, one suggestion was to setup the map in the ‘Post’ screen like you want it to look like (sat/street/hybrid, zoom level, center point) and then store those settings as the settings to use in the posted map.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:36 am (#)
pleas I want the earth maps api
September 21st, 2006 at 2:07 pm (#)
thx for helpful reply to my question.
How about my gpx question?
Many thx
September 21st, 2006 at 6:18 pm (#)
@ andrew
Yahoo only shows US and Canada (I’ve never used Yahoo for maps, so maybe I’m missing an option).
MSN shows something, so I’ll try to point it there. Although Google maps have lots of information plus the aerial photos.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:13 pm (#)
@steve - not yet, this is coming in a future version
@greg - are you not seeing foreign locations in Yahoo Maps? I would suggest then using a different map (which is easy to choose in the Options page)
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:52 pm (#)
Andrew
I am seeing foreign places in Yahoo, although I didn’t intially. But Yahoo doesn’t know about as many places as Google. For example, Diafarabé.
As for the suggestion to save the settings in the post, I don’t understand that.
I’m not sure coordinates are working for me either, but I’ll test them in the US to see if they work, it just may be the low res Africa problem.
I’m definitely over my head here. I’m interested because I’ll be in West Africa for a couple of months starting in November.
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:34 am (#)
Greg, thanks for the feedback - the point of the plugin is to make it easy for non-Geo experts to easily add locations. So you’re the target user.
Diafarabé, Mali works when I try it out. One problem is that the Zoom level is too high at default. So you need to zoom out to see it.
I will be releasing an update tomorrow (Sunday, Sept 23) that should address these issues to make it a little easier for you. If you have any questions - feel free to email me (check the About page)
November 6th, 2006 at 4:15 pm (#)
Killer job on this - I used the original Geopress plugin by Ravi and it was clunky and difficult to get working. With yours I unzipped it and using a few of your helpful functions like the_address(), I had it integrated into my travelogue in no time. Which is great, because I’m leaving for a 7-month RTW trip in about 36 hours.
I did a few nice things like checked to see if the location exists before printing out “from …” on my archive pages:
http://www.ghidinelli.com/go/trips/round-the-world/
Is there a way to get the friendly display name as opposed to the full address for the geo location? It would be nice to show “Home” or “Auckland” as opposed to my full home address or the hotel where we stayed or a zip code?
March 8th, 2007 at 5:10 pm (#)
I think I found out why the plugin doesn’t work in Safari..
Because you are using Mapstraction? The examples on that website don’t work eighter.
Are you aware of this?