Geolocation

This plugin is available for accounts with Silver, Gold, and Platinum plans.

The Geolocation plugin allows you to assign a location to items in your Omeka site. The locations are displayed on maps on individual items page and on a browsable map of all geolocated items.

There is a screencast for Geolocation (version 2.2.4) demonstrating its basic functionality.

Configuring

Once you have installed the Geolocation plugin, go to the Plugins tab in the top navigation of your admin dashboard. Scroll down to the listing for Geolocation and click Configure (if you do not see Configure you may need to click the Install or Activate buttons.

General Settings

The first section for configuration are the general settings for the appearance of your map on the public and admin sides of your site.

• Default latitude: set the center point of the map’s latitude (North/South value), in degrees. Using numbers after the decimal point will pinpoint the location more precisely.
• Default longitude: set the center point of the map’s longitude (East/West), in degrees. Using numbers after the decimal point will pinpoint the location more precisely.
• Default Zoom Level: Use a whole number of 0 of greater. 0 is the most zoomed out. A value of 15 will result in a map showing roughly one square mile
• Base Map: select a map from the dropdown to serve as the base map in the display. All base maps except those served by Mapbox can be previewed courtesy of Leaflet.

If you select Mapbox from the dropdown for Base Map, two additional fields will appear under general settings.

• Mapbox Access Token: in order to use Mapbox, you need to sign up for their service. Once you have done so, you can go to your account page and copy your access token to paste into this field.

• Mapbox Map ID: The “map ID” that goes here is the part of a Mapbox “Style URL” that comes after “mapbox://styles/”. You can use your own maps or one of the globally available styles. Leaving this input blank will use the default Mapbox street map.

  As of June 1, 2020, Mapbox has deprecated older-style maps. Geolocation 3.2 and up support the newer Mapbox API, and the plugin will automatically update your selected Map ID if you were using one of the “standard” map types. If you had specified a custom map ID, you may need to update it after upgrading Geolocation.

You can use MapBox to create your own map tiles, for example a historic map layer. Please refer to the MapBox documentation for more information.

Browse Map Settings

These settings are for the map through which users can browse all geolocated items, and for the “Search by Address function” that Geolocation enables in advanced item search.

• Number of Locations Per Page: The browsable map has pagination; set the number of items per map page with a whole number.
• Auto-fit to Locations: If checked, the browse map will ignore default location and zoom settings designated in General Settings and instead auto fit to the locations of the items displayed (on that page)
• Default Radius: for the Search By Address function in the advanced items search.
• A checkbox to Use metric distances for radius search, rather than miles.
• A checkbox to Enable marker clusters. When checked, markers that are very close to each other will cluster together and be represented by a number (indicating the number of markers)

A map with Enable marker clusters unchecked:

The same map with Enable marker clusters checked:

Item Map Settings

These settings are for the map display on an item/show page.

• Width for Item Map: set in percent, defaults to 100% if left blank.
• Height for Item Map: set in pixels defaults to 300px if left blank.

Map Integration

These settings are for integration of the geolocation map into the site menu and the contribution plugin’s form.

• Add link to map on Items/Browse navigation: click to make active.
• Add map to contribution form: click to make active. Note that this will only work if you have the Contribution plugin installed and active.

Getting Started

After you have activated and configured the Geolocation plugin, it is time to geolocate some items.

Geolocation adds a Map tab to the options for adding or editing an item (admin/item/add and admin/item/edit pages). When adding metadata for an item, click on the Map tab to add a location.

On the tab there is a field for you to find a location by address and a map which you can drag to move around, zoom in and out with the plus and minus options (or the scroll wheel on a mouse), and toggle between road and satellite maps.

Enter the address where you want the marker for the item to be placed. The plugin will automatically add a marker at that location.

You can also click directly on the spot on the map where you want to place the marker. A marker automatically maps the selected site.

To change the location of an item, type in the new address or click on the new location. You’ll be asked if you are sure you would like to change the item location. Select OK or Cancel.

To remove geolocation from an item, click directly on the marker. A dialog box will ask you to confirm that you want to delete the location assignment. Don’t forget to save your changes.

Viewing Items on the Public Map

Visitors to your Omeka site may use a map to browse through all of your geolocated items.

When configuring the plugin, if you selected “Add Link to Map on Items/Browse Navigation,” a “Browse Map” link will be added automatically to the secondary navigation on the items/browse page.

From this view, visitors may browse all mapped items, browse by tag, search for items and browse the map.

They may also locate a mapped item by clicking on the items listed in the right column of the map.

Browse and Search Items on Admin Map

A Map tab appears in the left navigation bar located on the left side of the Dashboard. Clicking on the Map tab takes you to a map that displays all items geolocated in your Omeka site–public and not public, and an advanced search form to locate specific items.

From this view, you may also search mapped items using the item advanced search. Search results appear directly on the map.

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