Displaying Your Maps

Displaying your Map with the Maps Builder Pro Widget

Currently the Maps Builder Widget simply allows you to choose a title, and select which map you want to show in that sidebar. It’s as simple as this:

Advanced Widget (Coming Soon!)

The Advanced Widget will be available in Maps Builder Pro. So far we are planning on the following features:

• Width and Height — You can set the width and height of this instance of the map without having to change the settings in the map directly.
• Toggle Fullscreen Modal — If you enable Fullscreen Toggle mode, it will embed a dynamically generated image into your sidebar and when clicked it will open the full map in a fullscreen modal for users to interact with.

Using the Shortcode

Just like the widget, you can insert any map, anywhere on your site via the shortcode. Currently, it’s just as simple as this:

In the post/page editor, look in the toolbar for the Maps Builder Generator Icon:

Once you click there, you’ll be presented with the Shortcode generator Popup. Simply select which map you are embedding and you’re done.

Note that the shortcode generator adds an image placeholder into the content area. Double-clicking on that placeholder opens the popup again so you can change the map to another of your choice.

Advanced Shortcode Generator (Coming Soon!)

The Advanced Shortcode Generator will be rolling out soon. Currently, these are some of the features we’re planning on:

• Choose different attributes to add to this instance of the map without having to change the map directly. Like adding traffic layers, snazzy map themes, and other basic settings.
• Choose the width/height of this instance.
• Enable the fullscreen toggle (see description in the Widget area above).

Archive View

By default, Maps Builder (both Basic and Pro) support Single Page and an Archive page. This works just like your Posts do in WordPress. You can see one instance with a unique URL, or you can see an image, title, and excerpt of all the instances with pagination on the archive page. Here are a few things to keep in mind when working with Archive pages:

The Archive Slug

A “slug” is the hyphenated phrase used to build the URL of your maps Archive and single posts. By default, the Archive page for Maps Builder is always

google-maps

. This means that your Archive page url will be

example.com/google-maps

.

If you’d like to change that, go to “Google Maps > Settings” and then go to the “General” tab. There, you can change the slug by putting any word or hyphenated phrase into the “Post Type Slug” field. For example, if you wanted your Archive page to be

example.com/locations

simply change

google-maps

to

locations

How Themes Manage Archive Pages

Every theme manages Archive pages in different ways. For example, if you have 20+ maps and you want them to be paginated, you’ll have to check whether your theme supports pagination correctly or not.

Perhaps your theme has a very stylized Blog Archive page with large images and titles. Your Maps Archive page will use the same style. So you’ll need to keep that in mind when you add a “Featured Image” to your maps and give them a title.

Customizing Your Maps Builder Archive Page

If you want your Maps Builder Archive page to look different than your other Archive pages, go into your theme and copy the

archive.php

file (or the

index.php

file if no

archive.php

exists) and change the name of the copied file to

archive-google_maps.php

. Now you can make your customizations there.

Disable Your Maps Builder Archive Page

If you plan to always embed your maps via the shortcode or the widget and have no use for the Archive page at all, you can disable it.

Go to “Google Maps > Settings” then go to the “General Options” tab and change “Has Archive” to “No”.

The main benefit of this is that, as already mentioned, Maps Builder creates the url

google-maps

to host your Archive page there. If you are not using that page, and you don’t disable this setting, then that url can be indexed by Google, and you might get traffic there and because it’s neglected it might not make a great impression. We offer this feature for your benefit.

Note that if you disable the Archive, it does not change the url of your single maps. They will still appear like this:

example.com/google-maps/your-map

This is how WordPress works with Custom Post Types in general.

The Single Map View

Every map in Maps Builder Pro can be viewed as a single page. After you publish the map, you can click the “View Map” button towards the top of the screen under the Title and you’ll see the single Map page open in a new tab.

Keep in mind that the layout of this page is controlled by your theme’s

single.php

file (or higher up the WordPress Template Heirarchy).

Customizing your Single Map Page

If you want the single map page to look different than your default

single.php

template, then simply copy that file and rename the new file

single-google_maps.php

and customize that template there.