Since we decided to insert custom google maps on our travel blog, many of you have contacted us to know how we’ve done this… I was thinking about the best way to explain it in a tutorial, but in the end I figured out it would even be easier if I could develop a free WordPress plugin you could use on your own blog to show your posts on awesome customizable Google maps !
The first version of the plugin was developed while we were traveling around the world. At that time, I was still a junior developer and I did many mistakes. But since that time, I kept on receiving e-mails asking me about the plugin and how to add custom Google maps featuring blog posts or pages. So in October 2017, I decided to completely re-code the plugin from scratch to create a version that would be good enough to be hosted on wordpress.org. And one and a half months later, here it is! The brand new version of Novo-Map is MUCH better than before and available on the WordPress plugin directory.
Adding some Google maps with all our articles displayed at one glimpse (you can see an example on our hiking page or our Switzerland page) significantly rose the time our readers spent on the website, allowing them to find the most relevant articles for them within a couple of seconds !
Insert a fully customizable Google map to show your blog posts
The idea was pretty simple : create a plugin which would allow everyone to implement custom Google maps on their blog in order to show their geo-located articles (or pages) in one glimpse. The map design needed to be flexible in order for you to integrate it in a nice way into the design of your blog.
The new version main features are the following:
- Insert an unlimited number of Google maps (even several maps per page) anywhere on your site using widgets or shortcodes!
- Use your own designs and images as markers. Stop using the ugly default pins to create truly unique maps !
- Fully customize the way your map looks like. Color, style, label of countries and cities ? Everything is up to you using tools like Snazzy maps!
- You can customize the content of the infoboxes with your own pictures, texts and titles.
- Option to cluster the pins which are close to each other.
- Filter the articles or pages displayed on a map per category or tag.
- Possibility to add a pin showing your current position.
- You can easily control default zoom and center, add some map control menus and much more…
For more information about the plugin, you can have a look at our user guide or check some examples displaying the main features of the plugin.
Download the plugin
Honestly, create this new version of the plugin was a LOT of work! But as we like the open source philosophy of WordPress and we also use some nice free plugins from other developers, we have decided to keep Novo-Map free to download. This was we hope to give our contribution to the WordPress community and maintain it’s accessibility.
But if you like the novo-map plugin and enjoy the functionality it brings to your website, we would really appreciate if you could donate some money to help us maintain and improve it. Donate some money to plugin developers is very important as it encourages free plugin development, keeps the WordPress community open and helps it grow.
Donate for the novo-map plugin
You can also give us 5 little stars and let us a review on the WordPress review page of the plugin. This is a very simple attention that will show us your support and help us share the novo-map plugin on the web.
To install the novo-map plugin, just search from your WordPress plugins menu or directly download it from the WordPress plugin directory.
Future developments and feedbacks
Maybe some of you noticed that the infoboxes we have on our website do not look exactly like the ones in the plugin demo. The reason is very simple, we use an upgraded version of the plugin with custom infoboxes. As I was saying earlier, I sincerely believe that the main functionalities of a plugin should remain free (In our case, novo-map will always allow you to display your posts or pages on 100% custom Google maps without limits).
On the other hand, more specific and time demanding (in terms of development) functionalities will be available in a future paid version. Even if I truly like the open source WordPress spirit, I can’t go on with the plugin development only counting on community donation (unfortunately). In this future version, I plan to integrate functionalities like:
- A bigger choice of quality markers directly available in the plugin.
- Allow to chose between different infoboxes styles and allow more control over their properties.
- The creation of lines between pins to create itineraries.
- Add several markers per article to enable the creation of article maps (for example a map with the places visited in an article).
- …
If you have some ideas of improvement, remarks or you discovered a bug, I invite you to open a ticket in the support of the plugin on wordpress.org. This way, I will have all the information at the same spot which will greatly help me to maintain and further develop the plugin. Thanks in advance for all you suggestions!
Hello,
I am sending this email to request the plugin of the new monde.
Many thanks and best regards.
Marco Marques
Hi,
I’m interesting with your Novomap WordPress plugin. Can you share with me ?
Thank you.
I’m sorry for not answering faster… to all the people that would like to download the novo-map plugin, I’m developing at the moment a cleaner and nicer version of the plugin that will be available on wordpress.org hopefully during the month of november. I hope you can wait until then… cheers
Very nice. But with wordpress will be possible to show only the near PINS, I suppose based on GPS position, or point of access position?
A sort of query-post-location?
Hi Jean,
I guess this could be possible 🙂 (everything is possible in programming) . I will add your suggestion to the list of possible functionalities to implement in the future. Thanks for your feedback 😉
Merci,
I am not a full stack dev, i will try the plugin in a next project related to my area.
I don’t know well if html5 and a browser can access to GPS like a native app. I am looking in forum in theese days
Funny i was actually planning on making a map with exactly the same functionalities. Is the code hosted somewhere like github for contributions, i’d love to help develop new features/bug fixes
Hi Rene,
So sorry for the late reply (I’m traveling these days and don’t have much time on the computer) and thanks a lot for your interest in helping to develop the plugin. For the moment, the code is hosted on a private gitlab. As I was mentioning in the article, the actual version of the plugin with the most important features is free and always will be. But as I mentioned in the post, I was planning to develop a paid version of the plugin with more specific features (even if it’s a shame, almost nobody is making donations…). As it’s my first wp plugin, I’m not sure how this is compatible with contributions… have you any experience about that ? But I would definitely love to have some help with the plugin.
I don’t have much experience making wp plugins either. However, from what i’ve seen from other open source project’s and wp-plugins, they have an open repository for the free plugin and im guessing a closed repository or a key that you buy (think liscence key) to be able to use some features. Also keep in mind the GPLv2 license which wordpress is under.
I would recommend you read this blog post and look at the plugins he lists as examples: https://www.speakinginbytes.com/2014/01/monetize-wordpress-plugin/
What you’re looking for is the Fremium model, Take for example Woocommerce: https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce
Or even GarvityForms which is a premium only plugin: their source code is on Github as well: https://github.com/wp-premium/gravityforms
theres also this example here: https://cpothemes.com/launch-freemium-wordpress-plugin
Thanks for the links and suggestions… I’ll have a look at that as soon as I have some free time and I’ll keep in touch with you 🙂
Hi! I’m wondering if there is a relatively simple way to replace the marker icon with the post’s featured image (and, ideally, that image be the link to the post’s permalink, but the infobox could work too). The idea is to show faces on the map, and when the user clicks one of them go to the corresponding post or page. Can you help me with that?
Hy Matias,
It is of course possible but there is no easy way to do that without tweeking the plugin code quite a bit. But I keep your suggestion in mind for the next version of the plugin (or the premium version…). But don’t expect too much until next summer as I’m quit busy these days
Hey Benoit – I really like the idea behind this plugin. It’s cleaner than a lot of mapping solutions I’ve tried. I was wondering if you have any plans to make it multisite compatible?
Hi Adam,
I’ve added your suggestion to the feature requests but I don’t know when I will have the time to update the plugin… hopefully before christmas.
Hi there, great Plugin, we are using it on our hiking for kids blog.
One thing, why isn’t there a search on the map or another search field for the map? It would make it 10x easier to set a new pin. Right now I have to externally open google maps, search the location, copy and paste the lat – long ….
It would be a lot easier to do it directly from the plugins map – would make it so quicker!
Hi Hannes,
Thanks for the suggestion. I agree with you that a search field on the admin side would make sense (I’ll put it on the list of things to do). But unfortunately I have very little time to invest in the plugin development as it’s just a side project (that I share freely)… so not sure if and when I will be able to do this 😉
Hello, I really like your plugin, It’s a very simple solution, I am having issues where I’ve left a log on the support page within WordPress. It’s straight forward; The infobox isn’t editable, The box doesn’t allow me to enter text. I’m hoping you might be able to suggest a solution. I’ve removed plugins and re-activated plugins with no luck. Is there any information I can give you to help? Thanks
Hi Tom, sorry I’m traveling at the moment but I just reply to your issue on wordpress
Hi, we are using your cool Plugin for some years but now it is stop working as WordPress says “This plugin has been closed as of March 7, 2024 and is not available for download. Reason: Security Issue.”
Will there be a new Version? Can we count on an update in some time? We love the plugin and it would be bad to have our travel-page without it.
Hey Anja,
Well the plugin should still work perfectly fine but yeah it has been removed from the WP plugin directory for some security issues. Unfortunately for now I really don’t have any time to fix this issue as we are quite busy with our coliving project. But hopefully I’ll have some time to work on this at the beginning of next year. Alternatively I can recommend you this plugin which is doing the same, just with leaflet and openstreetmap –> https://wordpress.org/plugins/travelers-map/