BETA VERSION: Map Locator Hack

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,

[Dennis01]

This would be such a cool feature.... :up:

[sblum]

Honestly, I think a better way of going about a hack like this is just to have a map of the globe, and let each user place a pin on the map where they want their location to be, and then when you hover over it it will say the username + the city/country (if applicable) they live in. Then one someone clicks on the map it just echos all this information that prestored. I had a hack like this on differet bb software and it worked great.

[fleccy]

thanks ive needed this hack for a long time im going to install it.

[roundhost]

Wouldnt it be easier to make it show what planet people are from in our solar system?

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by roundhost

Wouldnt it be easier to make it show what planet people are from in our solar system?

Wouldn't it be funnier to be a mod of this forum and delete such postings? :devious:

Cheers,

[ranger2kxlt]

Would love for the US map :-D

[DjTaz]

Pseudomizer - thats an excellent idea i must say.

I was having a think .... what if you left the people on their boards select the map they want ... and have a dropdown with locations on it that the Admin can specify using an small sql table .... like say 3 or 4 bits of info ... dropdown location, Xvector , Y vector. This would mean there would be less locations available to the user ,and the admin could set where on the chosen map drop down was.

Im not sure what you have done already , but the idea is excellent , and id love to see you get this working properly.

Thanks for the efforts either way

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by DjTaz

Pseudomizer - thats an excellent idea i must say.

I was having a think .... what if you left the people on their boards select the map they want ... and have a dropdown with locations on it that the Admin can specify using an small sql table .... like say 3 or 4 bits of info ... dropdown location, Xvector , Y vector. This would mean there would be less locations available to the user ,and the admin could set where on the chosen map drop down was.

Im not sure what you have done already , but the idea is excellent , and id love to see you get this working properly.

Thanks for the efforts either way

Hello DjTaz,

i have a problem at the moment. Please read the following posting first https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....3&postcount=76 and then i can tell you that this new system i have found is based on the german map only. I have not found any US maps so far for this specific system.

In addition i receive complaints about my BETA version because many people do not have access to the PEAR section of the webserver and their providers are declining installing it.

I am back to the roots at the moment evaluating multiple systems which can handle heavy load. My version can NOT handle heavy load without killing the SQL server in terms of performance.

Best regards,

[ranger2kxlt]

Some like this is what you need?

http://www.infoplease.com/states.html

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/

http://www.lightningstorm.com/tux/js...splay_free.jsp

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es

Something like that? Hopefully :-/

[ranger2kxlt]

<a href="http://monarch.tamu.edu/~maps2/us.htm" target="_blank">http://monarch.tamu.edu/~maps2/us.htm</a> just found this one, this might interest you :-D