I’ve managed to find a way back to reality and during that journey I discovered an alternative to google maps: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/
It really is excellent and allows an easy way to create slick looking maps to blend in with the design of your website and the businesses branding. It’s also open source.
Create an account at http://www.openstreetmap.org to save all your maps and you can easily embed your maps within your website using the iframe code.
Once you create your map, you can drop in the iframe component if using bootstrap or foundation “edit code” and replace the code with the iframe code you copied and pasted from uMaps. I set both height/width to 100% (within uMaps options) and depending on the layout I control the iframe using css for different screen sizes.
uMap has numerous customisation options so make sure you explore because at first it can seem daunting but you just have to explore all the options and remove/add to suit your requirements.
Simmo when you come to exploring, have a look at the right hand side options and click “change tile layers” as it comes with some default styling ready to use.
That will never replace google maps. Far too many spelling errors - look at Edinburgh as an example, and for my area mapping is massively inacurate with roads in wrong places, wrong road names and even roads missing completely.
Well for my area it’s spot on and also checked where I was born and it’s spot on - so who wins?
Nothing will ever replace google maps and while you can style google maps, this actually has more options overall and if you wish you can join the community and help with updating the maps.
I wonder when mandarin will return after making his comment about OpenMaps being massively inaccurate?
If you type into google “openstreetmaps or google maps” there are quite a few articles and discussions.
In fact more and more major organizations are choosing OSM for their maps. In February 2012, Foursquare switched to the OpenStreetMap powered Mapbox platform. In March 2013, Wikipedia started using OSM as well. Craigslist uses it for apartment searches and even Apple has used OSM data in its maps… Other popular platforms using OSM powered maps are Github, Pinterest, Roadtrippers and Strava, to name a few.
There you go, if its good enough for WIkipedia, Craiglist and Apple, I’m sure its good enough for Pinegrow Users
I didn’t say it was massively inaccurate, I said it was massively inaccurate for my area. There’s a difference. I’m sure it’s fine for many users but for me just too out of date with errors.
I clicked the create map button and moved to Edinburgh - spelt wrongly. Then I moved down the A1 as far as Alnwick, or tried to but there are huge chunks of it (the A1) simply not in place. Then some good news, there’s an amendment been made on the B4368 which I actually submitted to Google Map Maker 6 years ago, which Ordnance Survey still have to catch up with, so not all bad.
I guess it has promise, just a shame the starting point has so much missing.
You will notice the link I provide has a .fr domain / en - when you first arrive on the interface, certain cities have the french spelling, such as “Londres” and “Édimbourg”
Remember, uMap is using Open Street Maps data - this is what the end user will see - so there aren’t spelling errors and when you click search, type “Edinburgh” and that is what you will get, rather than the French wording.
- always nice to have a credible alternative to the big boys!
