Simple Google Maps Tool for CMS Content?

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I have an idea with wide appeal, for people looking to make their content engaging, supported by internal links. I think it would be fairly easy to “modularize” and I’m keen to help pay for its development (it’s a bit too pricey for me to shoulder it all on my own). I don’t know if REW is open to this kind of “project splitting” in the 2020s and I understand the difficulties. But hear me out:

It would be a pretty simple tool allowing us to do the following:
a) Put a Google Map onto any CMS content page (e.g., neighbourhood pages)
b) Add markers to the map; when a user clicks on a marker, there is a small popup with space for a thumbnail and a bit of HTML (e.g., a link to a corresponding page on the website)

Here’s an example of a similar map I’ve made, using “Google My Maps”:

I would be satisfied with this solution, except it is iframed, so the content is off-site and the internal links are seen as redirects; Microsoft Edge flashes a warning when a user clicks on one of those. I’d like to have an on-page option for this.

This would be a great tool in a lot of situations where we want to organize our pages with a map aid. Imagine if your community pages had these little maps with markers for your favourite parks, amenities or buildings. You could put a map on your “About Me” showing pins for every place you’ve sold. You could have a map for golf courses on your main “Golf real estate” page, and each pin would go to a page you’ve created for “Fairwinds Golf Course”, a page with some text and IDX listings in the area.

I’m sure it would help that REW already has this “built-in map market display with tooltip” in the IDX maps, so this would mostly be for adapting the dimensions for the CMS and building a little manager in the backend for creating the maps and their markers. We could make it very “manual” to save money if needed, like keeping images out of the popups, and/or forcing the admin to manually enter lat/lon and IMG paths.

I guess increasing our maps-calls is an issue; we removed IDX maps-by-default from IDX snippets for a reason, right?

Sorry if this outreach is annoying in any way - I just really want this, and the cost is about twice of what I can afford right now!

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Did you get the tool spec’d and quoted already?

What was the scope/estimate?

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The estimators said about 17.5 hours, and they articulated the scope like this:

"Create a map snippet manager. The manager will have two sections.

Markers:
Here the admin can create markers to be displayed on the map snippets. Editable content should include: Image, heading (32 chars max), description (allow only for text and a WYSIWYG editor would add paragraphs, links and line breaks), latitude, and longitude.

Maps:
Here the admin can create unique map snippets. Similar to the featured communities manager they can enter the name of the snippet (map-downtown), a heading (optional to be displayed above the map), latitude, longitude, zoom level, and then a checklist of all available map markers where the client can check which markers they want to display on that snippet.
Then the client can add the snippet to any CMS page, and then on the frontend that snippet will display the heading (if available), a google map, and then all the markers selected for that map. The default map view will be based on the latitude, longitude, and zoom level entered for that map."

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Sure, buddy, I’ll split it with ya! :slight_smile:

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That’s awesome man!
My account manager has already been in touch and I’ve approved it. Yay promo!
Fist bump.

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You should pop by REW HQ when it’s ready for testing, we can QA it together over lunch :slight_smile:

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