On my Churches site (www.minehead-baptist.com) I’ve used: http://avi.alkalay.net/2006/11/google-maps-plugin-for-wordpress.html and although the site uses WP, I’ve gone for the ‘manual’ approach, that can be used on any site (rather than the plugin), as I only want it on one page and can use custom code in the header to just pull the js onto that page…

I’ve also found: http://pininthemap.com/ which is handy as some of our Youth groups meet at another places, so this is a quick and easy way of getting a map link to the locations without having to do a full embed. Seems like tinyurl for google maps!

- The script now determines lat/lon automatically based on the address you enter! That should make it much easier for a lot of folks.
- The suggestion for adding driving directions is a good one. I’ll work on that.
- To answer the last question — yes, the data lives on our site. If we get tired of running the site, then the maps would go away. However, we’ve been around better than two years and get hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. It’s not just a small site I have on the side or anything. We’re not going anywhere.

Thanks for this link. I have given it a try and it work really well. The only thing I would have liked to have known is that the data lives on his website… I’m not particularly web savvy, but in lay person’s terms I think this is what’s going on: My website queries Mickey’s website which sends the data to Google. What if Mickey gets tired of running http://www.gearthhacks.com?

One thing that would be great to add to it would be a form to enter an address and get driving directions to the location.

That would be especially useful for my church. We don’t own a building at this point, so every activity or meeting is in a rented facility. Regular Sunday and Wednesday services are pretty stabel week to week, but other things (the church Christmas party for example) tend to vary to even members might not know how to get there.

Thanks for the nice write-up. I agree that having a lat/lon tool built-in would help. I’m looking into how to do that.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks!