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Latest news from Webeden

December 19th, 2008

Google Maps now integrated with Webeden

We thought we’d let you know about a couple of exciting developments that we’ve just made to our Sitemaker platform. The first is one that lots of you have been asking for so we’re really pleased to be able to get it out the door.

The news is: we’ve just added Google Maps to the Webeden.co.uk website builder. This means that you can easily add a Google Map to your website, and make it easy for your website visitors to find your physical location.

Maps are one of the Internet’s ‘pillar’ applications – its often the favoured way for people to get location based information. Up to now, when you’ve wanted to show your location, we’ve made you link to an outside map website. Now you can add Google maps directly into the pages of your webeden.co.uk website. There’s no need to send your visitors off to an external resource.

Apart from having a map, you can also add a location beacon that shows your exact location. And website visitors can manipulate the map by either zooming or dragging it around, to help them work out where they are.

Have a go – log into your control panel, its in the functional folder and is called ‘Google Maps’. Once you’ve done so we’d love to see the result, so post a comment below to let us know what you think.

6.4.09 Update: We’ve now produced a video tutorial to show you how to add a Google Map to your website.

  • http://www.2activ8.co.uk Nigel

    Tried the new Google map on the site 2activ8 but the postcode did not come up with the correct location. I tried a couple of different post codes and they were all out of location by a mile or so.
    Can you help?

  • admin

    Hi Nigel,

    There seems to be some teething problems the new Google maps with regards to postcodes.

    If you type in the first line of the address and the city e.g 1 nowhere street, London the Google map will find the destination.

    If you have any more issues with the Google map gadget then please leave a comment and we will do our best to resolve it.

    Kind regards

    Ray

  • http://www.portbannatynemarina.co.uk Alison Cross

    I’ve added it to the marina website and *think* that I’ve shifted the marker to the correct spot in the Port Bannatyne map.

    That’s a useful widget!

    Thanks!

    AX

  • http://www.portbannatynemarina.co.uk Alison Cross

    I’ve seen a fabby carousel widget on some sites that you could use as a menu, say, at the bottom of a page – with an image in the carousel to represent each page – any chance of getting your paws on that for us?

    AX

  • admin

    Hi Alison – I just checked your site and the Google map looks good – it must be very pretty up there!

    Ken

  • admin

    Can you point me in the direction of the Carousel widget? I can get the developers to take a look and see what they can come up with…

    Ken

  • http://www.portbannatynemarina.co.uk Alison Cross

    Ken – it’s on this website http://www.tarotprofessionals.com/ and from what I can glean with my limited knowledge, it’s an x-shockwave flash application.

    Best wishes

    AX

  • admin

    Alison, we just can’t seem to make this work – have upgraded our Flash and everything! If you see it anywhere else then please let us know.

    We are updating the platform to let you insert HTML onto the sites – and with that tool you can certainly upload a carousel from Widgetbox, but the catch is that they charge you – about £3 I think!

    Ken

  • http://www.portbannatynemarina.co.uk Alison Cross

    I can see that there are carousels on this site – eg an Amazon one and one that links to movies in YouTube, but I would guess that these are uneditable and designed to be used as they stand?

    Like many of the other builders on webeden, I just haven’t got the knowledge to build these things from scratch :-( Could you guys design something that we edit with our own images, much like you have with your pop up gallery?

    I’ve made several sites for friends and could really use this kind of gizmo!

    AX

  • http://www.portbannatynemarina.co.uk Alison Cross

    Actually, have found this – not done anything with it yet, but looks like people could use it ok. It’s free, but if anyone wants to use it, it would be a Good Thing to give the guy a donation for his work….but as I say, not tried working with it yet.

    http://www.flshow.net/carousel/lightbox/

    AX

  • admin

    Hi Alison,

    We’re currently trying to develop a carousel widget, I will let you know once it is ready. I’m not quite sure when that will be – I’m just getting noises and grunts from the developers at the moment!

    Ken

  • http://www.ibcsigns.co.uk Alison Cross

    Fantastic! I think that it would be a really attractive addition to the way people display their images…..and if possible, one could add links to the images to take people to appropriate pages on the site and use it instead of a bog-standard menu? Much more exciting!

    Another site that I am working on is for a jeweller. She sent me 200 pix (massive files, RAW format) that all needed changing to be useful on a website. I found a magic little gizmo on majorgeeks.com called pixresizer which does exactly that in seconds.

    I know that you don’t supply apps to help with work ‘outside’ the website….yet……but it might be an idea worth considering?

    AX

  • http://www.gloshosunison.org.uk Steve P

    Is there any way of pre setting google maps zoom function.
    Have map on site, but its default view is most of Europe and US.
    Is there any way of getting the default view closer to your placeholder?

  • admin

    Hi Steve,

    Yes there is. Log into your Sitemaker control panel. Navigate to the page with the Map. Change the map view – drag it or zoom in / out depending on what you want to see.

    Then hit ‘save’.

    And that’s it. When you navigate away from your page, the Google map will remain with the same view as you set it when editing it.

    For a video tutorial on this, please see http://www.webeden.co.uk/blog/video-tutorials/website-builder-adding-google-maps/

    Good luck!

    Ken

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