Another pie-in-the-sky extension idea - Member Mapping

LoOkOuT

1 year on: Shame to let this idea go to waste, espcially not that the various map apis have developed. Could this be made into a googlemaps extension, where the extension adds long lat fields to every user's account page. Then the info is pulled from the database and plotted (username and location) on a map so that whoever has supplied the info is included in the community map? The map is displayed on a static forum page (Page Manger type thing). Configurable roles and permissions etc.

houseinprogress

Someone's already made an extension like this automatically driven by IPs:

http://lussumo.com/addons/?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=205

We've also got this integrated in our Vanilla implementation over at Houseblogs.net. It's a manual approach, though, where the user enters their own latitude and longitude. A small map appears on each member page and there's a large all-member map as well:

http://www.houseblogs.net/community/extension.php?PostBackAction=GoogleMap

If there's interest we could probably clean it up a bit (we'd have to remove some stuff specific to our site) and post it in the directory here. I'll look in to it.

LoOkOuT

Yeah, true, but the one in the Add-on directory displays a map for each user on the Accounts page, whereas this discussion is about one map for the community, ie showing members in relation to each other. I'll take a look at the one you've got going there, because that sounds more like it.

LoOkOuT

Yes, that members map is what I personally am after. Would appreciate it if it's possible to make it into a public extension. How does a user enter their own lat and long? On their account page?

houseinprogress

Yes, it's an option on the account options menu. We can put it in to the add ons directory but it may take a little bit of work so I'll circle back here when that's done.

LoOkOuT

Much appreciated ;-)

shotoshi

House, count me in for this. I'm interested too. Ta!

houseinprogress

Here you go:

http://lussumo.com/addons/?PostBackAction=AddOn&Success=1&AddOnID=241

davatron5000

house, i just installed the extention and it's freaking awesome! thanks a lot.

LoOkOuT

Great stuff house. Many, many thanks.

LoOkOuT

@house: I'm reluctant to ask, as I appreciate that you've provided this so quickly and it's brilliant, but I'm having a bit of trouble. The extension ticks along nicely, working as it should for hours, and then out of the blue an error appears when a member attempts to load the account page. Error:

A fatal, non-recoverable error has occurred Technical information (for support personel): Error Message The "ManageLocation" class referenced by "ManageLocation" does not appear to exist. Affected Elements ObjectFactory.NewObject();

If I replace the extension's default.php all returns to functioning for a period until it happens again. Any ideas? I have the PrivateAccounts extension working and I'm wondering if there is a conflict there possibly? I also made a PrivateCommunityMap extension with the PA code, but the problem was happening before I enabled that.

Any help appreciated ;-)

3stripe

Any screenshots available of this extension in action? Chuffed that someone has executed this idea at last! :)

hutstein

Can you take a look at the default.php after the error appeard and look if there's at line 167 the following code
class ManageLocation extends PostBackControl { ... }

hutstein

@3stripe, no screenshot but a link
http://www.houseblogs.net/community/extension.php?PostBackAction=GoogleMap

houseinprogress

@LoOkHerE - hutstein developed the original version and was generous enough to make it generic for use in the Add-On directory, so I'll defer to his comment above to troubleshoot that.

3stripe - I don't have screenshots of this exact version, but you can get a sense of most of it (just minus the blog stuff) by going to the working version at houseblogs.net:

Full member map: http://www.houseblogs.net/community/extension.php?PostBackAction=GoogleMap
Individual member profile: http://www.houseblogs.net/community/account.php?u=23

If I get a little time I'll try to post some screenshots of the admin panels.

c-unit

Didier Hilhorst has a tasty map on his site instead of a blogroll - http://www.nundroo.com/

LoOkOuT

Thanks house.

@hutstein: yup, that line is there.

LoOkOuT

Running PHP 4.4.4

Would that influence it?