Introduction

GeoContent is a Joomla! 1.5 component that allows embedding of Google Maps into a Joomla! website.

Standard Joomla! Articles, can be bound to geographic features such as POINTs, LINEs and POLYGONs and the resulting maps can be shown in the article page and in an overview map.

A single GeoContent Item can be represented by more than one geographic type: so that you can have simultaneously a set of POINTS, some POLYGONS and some LINES for a single Joomla! article.

GeoContent Items on the map are grouped by GeoContent Layers, appearance can be fully customized through layers configuration.

Note

GeoContent was created as a sort of Geographic Index to Joomla! articles, the earliest versions had a tight binding between Joomla! articles and the geometric features that GeoContent was going to show on its maps. Suggestion from the users made GeoContent subsequently evolve to cover more general use cases, it is now possible to create GeoContent Items independently completely unlinked to existing Joomla! articles.

Key features

What makes this component unique among other mapping tools in the Joomla! galaxy is probably the level of assistance (this is really what people pays for), its ease of use, its configurability and and its input/output functions.

Input functions allows you to import tracks from a GPX file or directly draw into a map window within your browser, all your data will also be readily available in KML format.

Fromt the control panel interface you can configure the appearance in details:

for each GeoContent Layer, you can style:

• Line color
• Line width
• Polygon line color
• Polygon fill color
• Polygon line transparency
• Polygon fill transparency
• Point icon
• Point icon size (KML only: not supported in the embedded map)

Of course you can configure several aspects of the main map appearance:

• Table of Contents (TOC) type (hidden, list, select)
• TOC position (left, top, right, bottom)
• TOC and main map width (onyl useful for TOC position left and right)
• Which layers should be activated at start (none, all, selected)
• Map dimensions
• KML icon (hide or show)

Map types

GeoContent can produce different kind of maps, allowing a broad range of use cases.

Overview maps

An Overview Map can be used as a geographic index to your Joomla! contents (articles or other Joomla! elements), this kind of map is typically used as a primary or secondary home page to show how website’s contents are positioned on the globe.

Automatic maps

An automatic map is generated by a Joomla! Content plugin which automatically adds a map to an article’s page if the article has an associated GeoContent Item.

Tag maps

Tags maps are the most flexible type of map: they are inserted by a Joomla! Content plugin which replaces the {geocontent} string when found in an article’s body.

Tags maps can be configured in depth to show or not to show the Table of Contents or certain layers.

Current limitations

• You cannot place more than one map on a single page. This limitation will be eventually removed.

Small glossary

Just a few terms used in this manual and their meaning:

• GeoContent Layer: layers are groups of geometric features (GeoContent Item, see below), they also hold all informations concerning the appearance (colors, transparency, line width etc.) of the GeoContent Item
• GeoContent Item: these are the geometric features which share the same balloon text (if any), the same hyperlink (if any) or the same link to a Joomla! article (if any), GeoContent Item can also be ‘’complex’’ in the sense that GeoContent does not pose any limitation on the number or geometric type (POINT, LINE or POLYGON) of the individual geometric entities you place in a GeoContent Item
• Table of Contents: a list of layers with associated controls to switch visualisation on or off and optionally a small globe icon to download layer’s contents in the KML format.
• Front-end: the public side of Joomla!, the Joomla! administration control panel is also known as back-end.