The Arcive of Official vBulletin Modifications Site.

BETA VERSION: Map Locator Hack · **Released**: 05-30-2004

Welcome to my first BETA Release of

Map Locator Hack or How-to-Find members in a nutshell

This is my first try to get help from you guys. I tried to develop this on my own but i failed. I need help from all of you.

Before i start to describe what this hack does please take a look at the live demo. It makes my life much easier. Live demo can be viewed here.

Please move your mouse over the marks. You will see userinformations.

So this hack provides a map for VBulletin to show where your members are living. But i do not have the data for the US. I just have the data for germany and due to this i can only provide the german map. I have added the US map and a map of india but without the data i will not be able to finish this hack for other countries.

Please read my installation instructions completly BEFORE you start installing this hack. This hack is not easy to install and it will take you at least 30 min to get it running with the german map.

I would like to add: This is not an official release. This is a BETA version which is currently in production. I would not post this in this BETA section when i would not need your help. So what i need from you ? Please read my install instructions and read the part about the US data. If someone can provide this kind of data, i will be able to publish this hack.

If no one can provide this data, i will not continue with this hack because it works for me and due to the help of an indian VB member i will finalize this hack for him for india. So it is up to you.

UPDATE BETA 1.01:
After having done the base work, i focused now on the performance. If you have many members in your domain and many people open this map, your server will struggle. The heavy SQL part of this hack will bring down your server. Due to this i implemented a performance improvement.

I created the following logic around the hack:
- check if the number of ZIP code entries of the members has changed.
- if yes, then redraw the map with all queries ( a lot of queries which are required )
- if no, then take the already drawn map and take the userinfo which has been saved into a file rather then redo all queries again

Improvement:
- Up to 800% because people do not change their ZIP code so often
- if new ZIP codes are added only 1 person will issue the heavy SQL load to your server and this just ONCE
- every other person will get the cached version of the map with a really nice performance ( 5 queries in total )

And on top of that i added the Locator template to the cached templates. So this hack should be performing very well now. You can check it on my live demo site.

I have updated the ZIP file with the new locator.php file. For upgraders, just replace the locator.php file in your forum root folder. Then please do a "chmod 777 data" in your forum root folder. All set all done.

Cheers,

insanctus · #2 05-31-2004, 12:21 AM

Wow that is very cool idea... props to you (not useful for usa folks yet but still promising)

weaver · #3 05-31-2004, 12:33 AM

I can't help with the USA info but I really hope someone can. I'd love to add this to my site.

Pseudomizer · #4 05-31-2004, 12:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snobbymom

I can't help with the USA info but I really hope someone can. I'd love to add this to my site.

I know from the indian guys, that they are going to buy a CD with the data on it. Then export the data into a SQL format and provide it to me. The data is freely available. Only the maps and the software on the CD is not freeware.

So if something similar is available for US then please go for it. As soon as someone can provide me the data, i will release the US version of this hack.

Cheers,

Reeve of shinra · #5 05-31-2004, 01:09 AM

Great hack but I saw it was using 71 queries... I dont know if that can be reduced but if not, you may want to limit how often the page can be refreshed (like the search feature) in case someone gets pissed at you and decides to reload that page until your site crashes.

Pseudomizer · #6 05-31-2004, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

Great hack but I saw it was using 71 queries... I dont know if that can be reduced but if not, you may want to limit how often the page can be refreshed (like the search feature) in case someone gets pissed at you and decides to reload that page until your site crashes.

Hi Reeve,

you are right. 71 queries are a lot and this is the reason why this is a BETA release. There is no performance tuning done, there is no optimization done yet. This is on the to-do list.

But regardless of this we can discuss this here because i see a problem how to reduce the number of queries. I need the ZIP code for each member. Then i need to draw the point into the map where this member lives and then i have to gather the information about this member like habition and link to his profile.

So in total there are 2 x times the number of members queries for this page. I reduced it already from 4 x times the number of members by using arrays but keep in mind that i have to draw a point into the map for each member.

But i am very open for suggestions to reduce the number of queries because i always try to keep my queries very low. Any ideas ?

Cheers,

Reeve of shinra · #7 05-31-2004, 01:56 AM

completely understand that its a beta, I didn't mean to sound condesending in any way. I can only imagine the amout of work it took to integrate this and the results are great!

I'm not the greatest coder but perhaps this could be a static html page thats updated with new users via cron at a set interval?

joeychgo · #8 05-31-2004, 03:02 AM

What US info do you need?

Pseudomizer · #9 05-31-2004, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joeychgo

What US info do you need?

Download the hack and open the install.html file. In the file you will find an example of what i need in detail.

Cheers,

Pseudomizer · #10 05-31-2004, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

completely understand that its a beta, I didn't mean to sound condesending in any way. I can only imagine the amout of work it took to integrate this and the results are great!

I'm not the greatest coder but perhaps this could be a static html page thats updated with new users via cron at a set interval?

This is a good point. What i could do:

- Implement at the beginning a query which counts the number of ZIP codes entered by the members.

- If the number is the same, then don't redraw the map

- If the number is not the same then draw the map and instead of echo the userinfo and data like mouseover, write this info into a file.

- open the map and load the data from the file

So this would reduce the number of queries to 1 or x. And only if a new ZIP code has been entered, the load of queries will run.

How does this sound ? Good or bad idea ? Any other possibilities ?

Cheers,

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