Google Mapping for Joomla and Community Builder
Last Updated on Friday, 14 May 2010 00:36 Written by Nicholas Myrna Friday, 14 May 2010 12:22
Community Builder is at the heart of many Joomla sites. Inside CB, sites often have information about birthdays, addresses, kids’ ages, hobbies, locations, and all kinds of other interesting information. For sites that are built around social or professional networking, or even sites for churches and other social groups, being able to find members with something in common in a geographic area can be a great thing.
That’s where CorFun’s JMaps Module comes in. JMaps can take your CB Members and display them on a Google Map and show that map in a Joomla module position!
The key to this functionality is the CB Users List. A CB Users List allows you to create a list of all your users, or to filter that list by key fields and values. You can show a list of users for a given state or country, by specific interests, or any other kind of filter you have data to support. The Users List can be shown on the frontend of Joomla for either registered or public users to view. In addition to the displayed view which an admin can control based on pre-set filters, visitors to the site can do simple or complex searches that can further refine the display of members. JMaps changes its display to match any Search Results!
JMaps can also be set to display a map of a given Users List on any page in Joomla. Put a filtered view of your site members on any page you choose, in any module position you want to use!
How can JMaps be used? Here’s an example. A professional organization for counselors lets people search for counselors in their area. The search is actually a CB Users List which sorts by State. The CB Users List is mapped to an instance of JMaps. People visiting the site can see all the available counselors that belong to the site on the initial CB Users List and the accompanying map. Users can start looking at profiles based on the map and list results, or they can optionally search for counselors in a specific City, within a specific Zip Code, or a given specialty. The list and the map both change to show only counselors that meet the requested criteria. The user can look through the profile information shown in the list, look at the counselors' location on the map, and then decide which counselors are most convenient.
JMaps can work with Community Builder to provide maps of members based on any kind of criteria that you have access to on the profiles. Combined with the power of CB’s User List searching, this is a powerful tool that we have already seen benefit Chambers of Commerce, Churches, and professional organizations. CorFun expects volunteer organizations, political campaigns, and other organizations that promote “real world” contacts between site members in local areas to also make great use of JMaps and Community Builder.
As with SOBI2 mapping, JMaps can set a different map pin color and an optional “star” image for featured members. In addition to Search Results from Community Builder, the JMaps module can be used to display mapping based on an XML file, and can add mapping entries to any map from an RSS or KLM feed.
Some organizations will be using this mapping functionality for internal planning only. One Church in the Orlando, Florida area plans to allow only the pastoral staff to have access to the mapping tool. They plan to use it for picking locations for Bible Studies and home gatherings, but have no plans to allow regular members or others to see this layout.
Whether the goal is to let members advertise the general public, network and locate each other, or even provide a visualization for staff planning purposes – the combination of Community Builder and JMaps is going to be a valuable addition to many Joomla-powered Websites!
JMaps is available in various bundles depending on your specific functional needs. For JMaps with CB Mapping, click here. For JMaps with both CB mapping and SOBI2 mapping, please click here.
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