I thought I had this bad boy all wrapped up, but apparently not…
I’ve spent some spare time this week on putting together a WordPress plugin that integrates Google Maps into the comments on a post. I’d intended to make this available for a WordPress Page, as well, but it seems that WordPress is lacking the needed hooks to elegantly extends Pages in the same way that you can with posts. grumble
The goal with this plugin is to enable someone who comments on the post (or Page) to also specify their location. Once the location has been collected, it will be displayed on a Google Map that’s embedded in the page, just after the content of the post. I expect this will be a good replacement for Frappr maps that some bloggers have been linking to to build up a map of their readership. But this really belongs to a Page, in my opinion, however, and that’s where I’m stymied.
Anyway, what you (should) see here is my GeoComments plugin in action. Once I’m sure it’s working outside of my own test environment, I’ll officially release it and let the teeming masses have their way with it. If you’re feeling particularly frisky, check out a working copy from my svn repository into a directory named “geocomments” in the wp-content/plugins directory.
I still have some work to do with the way the location fields are presented along with the comment form; they’re currently functional, but ugly. There are some nomenclature adjustments to be made, as well. It’s also not been tested outside of Safari on OS X 10.4.3 or FireFox 1.0.7 on the same, but I don’t think I’m doing anything browser-incompatible.
So, please, comment below, and tell me where you’re from!
update I decided to bite the bullet and release 1.0. Time for me to get on with some other things!
There’s now a rudimentary project page.