There are many uses for a map, both in terms of charting where you have been as well as where you want to go. In the Industry Related Pages, we will be showing you tutorials on how to set up our plugin on your site so that you can display maps and content for your particular industry.
On this page, you are going to learn about how to set the plugin up to best display your Real Estate listings with both a front page map displaying all available locations as well as individual maps for your property information.
To begin with, you will need to create a main map to display the whole area of your Real Estate listings. If you do not know how to make a map, please consult the following page before continuing with the tutorial – (http://www.wpgmaps.com/documentation/creating-your-first-map/)
You can name your map something memorable, but make sure you have the word “Main” in it to identify that you are making this map your overall (Main) map for your site or for a particular listing area. In the above, I have the word Main as well as Pensacola in parenthesis so this means it is the main map for Pensacola just in case I have more listing areas.
You can now either add markers directly onto the main map (Method 1) or you can create different maps for each listing and us a Mashup (Method 2). We will show you both methods in this tutorial.
Method 1
This is slightly faster and easier at first. All you need to do is add your marker locations to the map and choose a style, save and finally copy the shortcode into the Page to display the map like below. For the purposes of the tutorial, there are only 2 listings available. Now you can alter some Basic settings, you can add a category selection (You will need to add the Categories of For Rent and For Sale first) as well as show a marker listing and the map will look like the one below.
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As you can see, as soon as you select a filter category the markers and the listing update.
To get this same effect, please select the Marker Listing Options tab and select the Basic Table (Second in list) and then check the option of “Allow users to filter by category” and your map is good to go. Please note that when using the Filter by Category option, you will need to add the Categories first.
The only drawback of this method is as follows – if you have multiple pages each with their own property/marker, then you will need to either create more maps for these markers, or you will need to use a GET variable (http://www.wpgmaps.com/documentation/using-get-variables-to-control-your-map-linking-to-a-marker-from-another-page/) in order to display those markers. It is not difficult, but it can get a little confusing. This is still much faster than adding all markers as separate maps and using a Mashup.
Method 1 is perfect if you are just looking to display your markers on one map with each marker linking to the listing information page on your site (ie – if you do not need to display a property area map on the listing page).
Method 2
All you need to do is create your map as in Method 1, however, it might be easier to remember to place Mashup in the title as then you know what you are doing with the map. You can now duplicate this process to create individual maps for each of the markers. Again, it is best to name each new map after the marker so that you can keep up with all the markers for your map.
You can see that the markers are actually separate maps with different styles applied to both at various zoom levels. Again, we will be showing 2 markers for illustration, but as you can see, using the Mashup shortcode, you can display two separate marker locations on one main map.
All you need to do is use the short code [ wpgmza id=”41″ mashup=true mashup_ids=”42,43″ parent_id=”41″ ] But ensuring the brackets have no space on either side.
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The only drawback of this method is as follows – It takes a bit more time to make each map, however, if you have markers that are for rent, all you need to do is remove the map ID of the property that was rented and you can keep the listing for when the renter moves out to display again. In the other method, the only way to remove a marker is to delete and then you will have to make the marker again on the same map.
To get this same effect, please see how to set up the map under Method 1 if you like having the marker listing and filter categories applied. However, please note that the marker listing and filter options are carried over from the map ID and the parent_id in the above Mashup Shortcode, so to change the styles, you will need to edit the parent map rather than the individual maps on your site.
Method 2 is perfect if you need a little more control over your locations and if you want to display each marker with it’s own page and map on your site.
If you do not see your industry represented in these listings, please get in touch with us here and we will appraise how to add your request into our documentation. Please note that we reserve the right to refuse to place your selected industry on our documentation due to either social, political or religious reasons.
Please let us know if you enjoyed this tutorial and we will try to make more like it.
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