In web development it’s a often a best practice to only load CSS and JavaScript files on pages where you need them. Developing an efficient website is both a matter of site performance and of professional pride. In WordPress though it’s all too often that a carefully maintained site is suddenly filled with extra files […]
Spatially enable WordPress with WP-GeoMeta-Lib
I presented this talk at the 2017 FOSS4G conference in Boston. The target audience was a group of GIS developers and users who were not WordPress experts. You can view the slide deck or view the video presentation below, or download a PDF of the slides here. The text below the video mostly follows what […]
FileMaker, WordPress, and the Healthcare Medical Industry – HIPAA Compliance
FileMaker has a new Healthcare portal available to assist with building custom applications for the medical field. This free eBook features LuminFire’s mobile healthcare TrackUS custom app built using FileMaker and web technologies. LuminFire specializes in assisting clients in the healthcare and related medical industries by rapidly building affordable custom applications and websites. Some of the […]
Minnesota Grown Gets Custom Search Intelligence System with Enhanced WordPress Website
The Minnesota Grown Program is a statewide partnership between the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and over 1,200 producers of specialty crops and livestock within Minnesota. Their mission is to connect consumers directly with local producers of items from Christmas trees to honey to livestock, boosting Minnesota’s agricultural economy and promoting agriculture-related, family-friendly activities along the […]
Cimbura.com Interview from DevCon 2016
Many thanks to Donald Clark from FileMakerProGurus.com for this interview of Cimbura.com executives at the FileMaker DevCon 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. Gain insights into the FileMaker business world, highlights of sessions at DevCon including WordPress and GIS, Women of FileMaker, and many other ideas from Tim Cimbura (CEO), Dr. Brenda Cimbura (COO), and Nick […]
26th Annual Minnesota GIS/LIS Conference
“Your Geospatial Destiny” was the theme of this year’s 26th Annual Minnesota GIS/LIS conference held in Duluth, MN (#MNGISLIS). The Cimbura.com GIS team was there to speak, learn, network, and tour a really cool Great Lakes research vessel known as the Blue Heron. It was a great opportunity to connect with friends and learn about […]
Announcing WP-GeoMeta
We’ve been hard at work on a new WordPress plugin called WP-GeoMeta and we’re happy to announce that it was just accepted in the WordPress plugin repository! Spatial Support for WordPress Metadata What does WP-GeoMeta do? WP-GeoMeta makes it possible to store spatial data within WordPress. Just storing data isn’t very useful if without a […]
GIS and FileMaker – Part 1: The Basics
You’re starting to understand why you need GIS in FileMaker… now let’s get to the how. In this post we’re going to cover the basics of creating maps in your FileMaker solutions from built-in, no code required options to interactive Leaflet maps that require just a bit of HTML, CSS, & JS.
When and Why to Use Hosted GIS Services
We’ve talked a lot about how using a mapping framework to build custom maps allows for utmost creativity and interactive control (see Choosing a Mapping Framework ) but it is important to know what off-the-shelf alternatives exist. There are many 3rd party services that may allow you to create the map you need, or parts of it, with less effort and cost than doing it all on your own. As a WordPress or FileMaker developer you are probably already heavily involved in your own development platform. Using a 3rd party service may help minimize the additional software, APIs and data structures you need to learn to implement the mapping your users need.
WordPress Core Contributions
One of the benefits of using open source software like WordPress is that (if you choose) you can lend a hand to help make it better. That may mean contributing code, reporting bugs, testing releases, documentation, making it more accessible to those with disabilities, etc. It also means that thousands of other users and developers contribute […]
Mapping Your Own Data
Cartography is the art and skill of making maps. It involves elements of design, story telling, statistics, math and countless other skills. This blog post won’t make you a cartographer, but it will expose several common cartographic issues that come up when designing web maps. Maps tell stories, and what makes your story unique is the data you display and how you display it. Putting your data on a map is a mix of technical options and creative inspiration.
The Basics of Basemaps
There are two major factors to consider when selecting a basemap for your map: Functionality and Style. Picking a gorgeous basemap that makes your map unusable doesn’t help anyone, and most visitors won’t want to use an ugly map even if it’s useful. There are plenty of nice basemaps out there, and it’s not very difficult to create a custom basemap. Hence, these days there’s no excuse to using a lousy basemap. Choose a great basemap and make your website…
Choosing a Mapping Framework
A Mapping Framework is to a web map what an engine is to car. It is a JavaScript library that loads when your web page does. It manages the display of your map data, handles user interactions with that data (e.g. clicking, scrolling, zooming, etc.) and provides ways for your own custom code to interact with the map and data. Modern Mapping Frameworks are finely tuned to use web browser capabilities efficiently and to handle different browsers and devices. Your map should work as expected on Internet Explorer and Chrome, on your laptop and on your smartphone. So which mapping framework should you choose?
Anatomy of a Web Map
Web maps are like cars. It’s easy to appreciate a nice looking web map, but most people don’t need to know about everything that’s going on under the hood. Just like when buying car, however, if you understand the basics of how a web map works you’ll be in a much better position to make decisions when building a new one. Users expect web maps to be everywhere now, in their car, on their watch, on your WordPress web site, in your FileMaker database and anywhere else you present them with mappable data.
Great Clips Mobile Technology Success
The other day I found myself in a different city after dropping my daughters off for a birthday party. I had some errands to run including getting a hair cut…and technology made it a seamless and enjoyable customer experience. Here’s how it went… I picked up my iPhone and said to Siri “Great Clips”. Instantly a […]
fmBatchGeo – Multiple Location Google Maps from FileMaker
We recently found BatchGeo.com. It’s the fastest way to create Google maps from your data. It accepts addresses, intersections, cities, states, and postal codes and then does the hard work of figuring out where all your data lives in the real world and creating a Google map. There have been various FileMaker solutions to this […]
Google Maps vs. Apple Maps
Update 11/12/13 – Apple Maps has come a long ways. Report: Apple Maps dominant on iOS after a year of improvements As predicted, it is now a much more viable application. Update 7/22/13 – Apple is acquiring companies to improve their Apple Map capabilities to compete with Google. Update 12/18/12 – Google released Google Maps for iOS…so just download […]
fmMapCharter – Highlighted Country/State Maps for FileMaker
This sample database can be used by FileMaker developers to help create a customized solution. It is provided free of charge. Use Google’s charting to create a customized map of areas the world. Includes ISO country and state tables. Using the FileMaker web viewer you can build a URL that is sent to Google and returns […]
