Wilson Visuals Blog

It's really simple to add maps to your homepage or your clubs home page or pretty much anywhere you can edit HTML. Anyone with a javascript aware browser that knows the <iframe> command will be able to look at the map. If you want to see a map in action, check out the viking canoe club or bardstown boaters pages. Last post I included a map on a post about lost paddle. We'll see how I included the map in that article.

A simple example

The page was added using the command

Adjusting the map location

This is the hard part. Right now, I haven't made any tools to help you find the latitude and long of a map, so the thing to do (if you don't know the coordinates off hand) is to go to the url and move the map around by putting in different values after lng= and lat=. Just so you know longitude is the x-direction and latitude is the y-direction.

You can change the zoom level by putting a different value for zoom. Higher numbers zoom out, so zoom=10 is a pretty broad view and zoom=4 is fairly close. There usually isn't any satellite data at close views (like zoom=1 through zoom=3), but it doesn't hurt to try.

Adjusting the style

If you add the "&type=satellite" option to the url, then you will get satellite photos instead of a city map view. Eventually I'll add a &type=hybrid option, so if that is important to you might email me (gauges at wilsonvisuals.com).

You can change the style of the iframe as well using HTML commands (tutorial). You can add a border by setting frameborder=1 or frameborder=2

Keep in touch and Terms of use

You are welcome to use these maps on any paddling related site, and I'm particularly interested in seeing them on smaller web sites (like personal pages and paddling clubs). You should make the map large enough that it doesn't obscure the copyright and disclaimer at the bottom... otherwise, have fun. If you add maps to your web page, let me know by email or a link in the comments below, I'd really like to see them.

Take care