Best mapping plugin with minor issues

Category:

4star Reviews

For those who need a quick and easy solution, I have found this to be the best mapping plugin available by a long shot, and I have tested a number of them. Once you wrap your head around the plugin workflow, managing large numbers of placemarks is easy.

The good:

1- Creating new placemarks and assigning them to maps is easy once you figure out the framework.
2- Bulk importing of placemarks is possible to save time for larger datasets.
3- The icon set delivered with the plugin, plus the others available on the web is fantastic!
4- Can easily use your own icons.
5- Maps are stylish and it is easy to change the parameters via a huge selection of customizable options.
6- Popups are stylish and easy to further customize via CSS.
7- Zoom features are innovative. When you have a bunch of placemarks and are zoomed way out, all you see is a circle with a number corresponding to the number of placemarks you have in that area. Clicking on the number zooms you in to the extent of the placemarks comprising that cluster.

The Bad:

1- If you have multiple maps that use the same marker, you cannot share that marker- you need to create duplicates. This also applies to tracks.
2- The map can display multiple tracks, however all the tracks get combined into one entity. This is a serious drawback for those wishing to display any kind of network (ie trails, roads, utilities) where the network components have different colors or attributes. For example you may want to display a trail network by difficulty (green, blue, black) or a by name. No can do at this time.
3- There is no ability to copy and modify an existing marker if say you only need to change the coordinates. This adds time to a project if you have 20 parking lot markers to create and the only difference between them is the location. It is one of those small things that can add to the frustration factor in a larger project.

The Ugly:
Nothing so far!

The Verdict:
4 stars for how it sits today, 5 stars for addressing the track display issues and streamlining the workflow.

westcoaster222

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/best-mapping-plugin-with-minor-issues?replies=1#post-4952660

Updated on 19 February 2014