Basic Google Maps Placemarks

Read the instructions on the Installation page. If you still have questions, read this FAQ and look for answers on the support forum. If you can't find an answer, start a new thread on the forums.

Read the the Installation page. Read the answers in this FAQ. Look through the support forum, because there's a good chance your problem has already been addressed there. Check the Other Notes page for known conflicts with other plugins. If you still need help, then follow these instructions: Disable all other plugins and switch to the default theme, then check if the problem is still happening. If it isn't, then the problem may actually be with your theme or other plugins you have installed. If the problem is still happening, then start a new thread in the forum with a detailed description of your problem and the URL to the page on your site where you placed the map. Please copy/paste any error messages verbatim. Screenshots can be very helpful, too. And please be respectful. Check the 'Notify me of follow-up posts via e-mail' box so you won't miss any replies. I often don't have time to provide support, but if I can't there's still a chance that another user will be able to help you. If not, I'd recommend hiring a developer. See the Customization section on the Other Notes page for more info on that.

All of the features that the plugin supports are documented on these pages. If you don't see a feature mentioned, then that means that the plugin doesn't support it. You'll need to write the extra code yourself if you want to add that feature to the plugin, or hire someone to do it for you (see the Customization section on the Other Notes page). There are filters throughout the core code to support customization. If you need a hook or filter that doesn't currently exist, add a post to the support forums to request it and I'll add it to the next version. You can also try searching the support forums in case others have already worked out a way to do it. If you do get it working with your custom code, please share it on the support forums so that others can benefit from your work.

Sometimes Google requires you to obtain an API from them in order to use the Google Maps and Geocoding services on your site. You can go to the Settings screen for instructions on how to get them. Developers can also use the bgmp_maps-api-url-parameters and bgmp_geocoding-api-url-parameters filters to programmatically assign keys.

There are several possible causes for this error, but they generally fall into two different categories. Google Maps didn’t recognize the address you entered. The plugin couldn’t connect to the Google Maps API to geocode the address. If the error is followed by something similar to the example below, then the problem was with connecting to the Maps API: Geocode response: stdClass Object ( [results] => Array ( ) [status] => OVER_QUERY_LIMIT ) If the problem is with the address, you can try entering it in a different format. For example, instead of “5th Ave and Blanchard St, Seattle”, try “2124 5th Ave, 98121”. You can also try using latitude/longitude coordinates to bypass the geocoding process entirely; see the other FAQ answers for details on that. If the problem is with the connection, some of of the possible reasons for that are: Google Maps places a limit on how many geocoding requests it will serve per day. If you're using shared hosting, there could be other sites on your server or netblock that are also making requests, and you've hit the limit for the day. If this is the problem, you’ll probably need to ask your web host to move you to your own VPS, or just wait until tomorrow and try again. There could be problems with your network or server that are interfering with the connection. If this is the problem, your web host can help you troubleshoot it. Google could be blocking requests from your server’s IP address or netblock due to abuse or violations of their terms of service. The violations could be caused by your site, or another site on your server/netblock. If this is the problem, your web host can help you troubleshoot it. After they remove the problem then it might start working again after a delay (probably 1-7 days), or they may need to contact Google to ask that the server be removed from the blacklist. You can also try using latitude/longitude coordinates to bypass the geocoding process entirely; see the other FAQ answers for details on that. The page says 'Loading map...', but the map never shows up. Check to see if there are any Javascript errors by opening the JavaScript console in your web browser. An error caused by other plugins or your theme can prevent BGMP from working. You'll need to fix the errors, or switch to a different plugin/theme. Also, make sure your theme is calling wp_footer() right before the closing body tag in footer.php. The map doesn't look right. This is probably because some rules from your theme's stylesheet are being applied to the map. Contact your theme developer for advice on how to override the rules.

Yes. You can type anything into the Address field that you would type into a standard Google Maps search field, which includes coordinates. If the plugin recognizes your input as coordinates then it will create the marker at that exact point on the map. If it doesn't, it will attempt to geocode them, which can sometimes result in a different location than you intended. To help the plugin recognize the coordinates, make sure they're in decimal notation (e.g. 48.61322,-123.3465) instead of minutes/seconds notation. The latitude and longitude must be separated by a comma and cannot contain any letters or symbols. If your input has been geocoded, you'll see a note next to the address field that gives the geocoded coordinates, and the plugin will use those to create the marker on the map; if you don't see that note then that means that your input was not geocoded and your exact coordinates will be used to place the marker. If you're having a hard time getting a set of coordinates to work, try visiting Latitude and Longitude of a Point and use the coordinates they give you. None of the placemarks are showing up on the map If your theme is calling add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' ) and passing in a specific list of post types -- rather than enabling support for all post types -- then it should check if some post types are already registered and include those as well. This only applies if it's hooking into after_theme_setup with a priority higher than 10. Contact your theme developer and ask them to fix their code. Also check the Other Notes page for known conflicts with other plugins.

Yes, if you want to use the same custom icon for all markers by default, instead of having to set it on each individual placemark, you can add this to your theme's functions.php or a functionality plugin: function setBGMPDefaultIcon( $iconURL ) { return get_bloginfo( 'stylesheet_directory' ) . '/images/bgmp-default-icon.png'; } add_filter( 'bgmp_default-icon', 'setBGMPDefaultIcon' ); The string you return needs to be the full URL to the new icon.

If you only want to replace the default marker under certain conditions (e.g., when the marker is assigned to a specific category), then you can using something like this: function setBGMPDefaultIconByCategory( $iconURL, $placemarkID ) { $placemarkCategories = wp_get_object_terms( $placemarkID, 'bgmp-category' ); foreach( $placemarkCategories as $pc ) { switch( $pc->slug ) { case 'restaurants': $iconURL = get_bloginfo( 'stylesheet_directory' ) . '/images/marker-icons/restaurants.png'; break; case 'book-stores': $iconURL = get_bloginfo( 'stylesheet_directory' ) . '/images/marker-icons/book-stores.png'; break; default: $iconURL = get_bloginfo( 'stylesheet_directory' ) . '/images/marker-icons/pin.png'; break; } } return $iconURL; } add_filter( 'bgmp_default-icon', 'setBGMPDefaultIconByCategory', 10, 2 ); Here's another example to uses the placemark's ID: function setBGMPDefaultIconByID( $iconURL, $placemarkID ) { if( $placemarkID == 352 ) $iconURL = get_bloginfo( 'stylesheet_directory' ) . '/images/bgmp-default-icon.png'; return $iconURL; } add_filter( 'bgmp_default-icon', 'setBGMPDefaultIcon', 10, 2 ); The string you return needs to be the full URL to the new icon.

No, the Google Maps JavaScript API can only support one map on a page. You can have different maps on separate pages, though. See the Installation page for instructions on making different maps have different center locations, display different sets of placemarks, etc.

The width/height of the map and marker information windows are always defined in the Settings, but you can override everything else by putting this code in your theme's functions.php file or a functionality plugin: function setBGMPStyle() { wp_deregister_style( 'bgmp_style' ); wp_register_style( 'bgmp_style', get_bloginfo('template_url') . '/bgmp-style.css' ); wp_enqueue_style( 'bgmp_style' ); } add_action('init', 'setBGMPStyle'); Then create a bgmp-style.css file inside your theme directory or a child theme and put your styles there. If you'd prefer, you could also just make it an empty file and put the styles in your main style.css, but either way you need to register and enqueue a style with the bgmp_style handle, because the plugin checks to make sure the CSS and JavaScript files are loaded before embedding the map. I get an error when using do_shortcode() to call the map shortcode See the instructions on the Installation page.