Support for Interactive World Maps

You don’t have to upload any maps. The maps are all already included. You just need to choose what area to display from a dropdown menu. The plugin creates the maps with the Google Geochart API that includes maps of all the world. The plugin only works with the SVG maps provided by Google.

The maps are by default partially responsive. If no width is specified it will load with the maximum width available in the container div. For example, it will load and adapt with different sizes for phones/ipads/laptops. However, after loaded it will not change size if you resize the window.
Since version 1.4 the plugin includes an option to transform all the maps in Fully Responsive Maps. This will use jQuery to check if the window size changed and will redraw the map with the new available space. This is not a feature supported by the Google Geochart Maps, so it’s not perfect.

If you’re using “Markers Mode – Text Location” the text needs to be converted into coordinates by google geocoding which takes some time, specially if there are a lot of markers. To speed up the process you should use “Markers Mode – Coordinates Mode” instead. This way the markers already know where to be plotted, they don’t need the time to be converted from text to coordinates when loading. The same applies for the Text Labels mode.

Yes, although it must be activated in a specific way to work properly.

The correct way to install this plugin in a multi-site setup is to install it as network admin, but activate it as blog admin. This way the plugin will get the proper database prefix and will create tables for each blog. While at the same time the files will not need to be copied in every blog.

If you activate this plugin as network admin it simply won’t work correctly in the network blogs.

By default the maps can be managed by users roles that have the ‘manage_options’ capability. By default only the Administrator users have this capability. To change this, you can edit the plugin map.php and search for the line:

$capability = apply_filters( 'i_world_map_capability', 'manage_options'); 

This line will control the capabilities type for administrating the maps. You can change the ‘manage_options’ to some other capability. You can see editor level capabilities here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Editor You can change that line for example to:

$capability = apply_filters( 'i_world_map_capability', 'edit_pages'); 

Or add some custom code to a child theme functions.php file: https://gist.github.com/carmoreira/b919cc69ccea027e000bb34fc51c9108

Some users have reported conflicts with ‘Smooth Scrolling’ option from Themes. If you are using a Theme that allows you to enable/disable a ‘Smooth Scrolling’ effect, try disabling it to see if it solves the issue.

When a new update comes out, make sure you read the update description log on the bottom of the plugin’s page at codecanyon. After reading, you can decide if you need the update or not.

If you decide to update, here’s how you can do it:

Update via FTP manually – This is the safest way. If you have access via FTP to your site files, you can replace the plugin files with the updated ones. Just go to wp-content/plugins/interactive-world-maps and replace the files with the ones on the zip of the updated plugin.

Update via Wordpress Admin Manually – From the tests performed, you can deactivate and delete the plugin on the Plugin’s administration page of Wordpress and upload and active the updated files. This operation should not affect the entries you have already made.

Automatic Updates?

If you want your updates to be more automated, consider using the ‘Envato Market’ plugin available here: http://envato.github.io/wp-envato-market/

The current version of the plugin only has the US divided by States and DMA regions. It doesn’t include a map of US divided by counties.

This limitation comes from the Google Geochart API, which the plugin uses to generate the maps. The API doesn’t have a county map for US. It’s a very popular request, but so far Google people didn’t make these maps available. If they ever make the US counties map available my plugin will for sure include the map.

The current version of the plugin only has the UK divided in it’s 4 sub-divisions (ENG, NIR, SCT and WLS).

This limitation comes from the Google Geochart API, which the plugin uses to generate the maps. The API doesn’t have a county map for UK. It’s a very popular request, but so far Google people didn’t make these maps available. If they ever make the UK counties map available my plugin will for sure include the map.

If this is happening, the most likely cause is that your theme is missing the wp_head() function in header.php or the wp_footer() function in footer.php.

If your theme already has this functions or you added them and the problem still persists, contact me via the form on my profile page

The Google Geochart API only allows up to 400 entries of data for each map. So your map can only render 400 markers for example.

The plugin uses the Google Geochart API, which follows the hierarchy and distribution of regions listed here: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

In this list countries like Turkey and Cyprus are listed under the Western Asia region. This is something controlled by the API, that I don’t have control. Many people asked Google to change this, and it’s something they said they would update at some point. When they do, the plugin will also reflect this change. Until then we have this limitation in regions mode.

If you are not seeing some regions is because they might be too small to display at the scale the map is built. The data is being rendered, but visually the size of the region is smaller than a pixel at the current scale and therefore not visible.

For example, District Columbia state will most likely be too small to be visible in the map of United States. You need to have the US map very big for it to be visible. Alternatively you can use the map of Maryland, or DC to display it.

Other examples include Malta, Singapore, Gambia, among other small territories that might not be visible because they are too small.

As a workaround to make these regions clickable, you can place markers on those locations, using the ‘overlay markers map’ technique described here: http://cmoreira.net/interactive-world-maps-demo/overlay-maps-regions-map-markers-text-labels/

The maps are generated using the Google Geochart API, which currently seems to have a bug when displaying HTML tooltips on iOS devices:

• https://code.google.com/p/google-visualization-api-issues/issues/detail?id=1597
• https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-visualization-api/PS6BxPxU62Q/gdGLihGWusEJ

This is something that unfortunately doesn’t depend only on me to solve.

One solution for now would be to disable the HTML tooltips in the settings. Latest versions of the plugin also disable automatically the html tooltips only on iOS devices to allow the tap/click action to work.

If this is happening most likely your theme has some ajax loading effect or transition effect when changing pages in your website. When loading content this way, the page doesn’t process the necessary javascript for the maps to display. Only when the page is loaded directly this works well. Check in your theme options if this transition effect is something you can disable or if there’s a field where you can specify which pages not to use this effect. If this is the case place the URL for the page where your map is there.

This might be corrected in a future update, but currently you can use this CSS in the custom css field in the settings:

/* this should hide the default white background of the tooltip container. Added some margins to adjust position */
.iwm_map_canvas #map_canvas_1 .google-visualization-tooltip { background:none; border:none; margin-top:20px; margin-left:20px; }
/* this will hide an empty div the tooltip has, which may cause some white space */
.iwm_map_canvas #map_canvas_1 li.google-visualization-tooltip-item:first-child  { display:none; }
/* this will hide the element in case it is empty */
.iwm_map_canvas #map_canvas_1 li.google-visualization-tooltip-item:empty  { display:none; }
/*this will add a background only to the content itself, with a small padding */
.iwm_map_canvas #map_canvas_1 li.google-visualization-tooltip-item  { background:#FFF; padding:3px; }

HTML tooltips should be enabled for this to take effect.

Most likely it’s an issue with the database.

If you’re on a WordPress multisite, please read this information.

If you’re using a normal WordPress installation, try disabling and enabling the plugin. If the problem persists, go to Plugins > Editor > Choose Interactive World Maps and open the file map.php of the plugin and locate this line:

$iwm_db_version = 5;

It will exist twice in the file. Change it to:

$iwm_db_version = 6;

Save the change, disable and enable the plugin again. This should force the plugin to try to create the database table again. If the problem persists, contact the author via the contact form on the support tab indicating you already performed these steps.