Ireland map with clubs on it

Nice work lads!

Trevor,
I like your map. I think it should be used in some fashion as it would be useful for driving directions.

Seanie,
Your format of map is on the right track for use on the front page. My personal preference would be to remove the magnifing glass and incorporate the gold dot into the silver tag which contains the name of the club. This would tidy it up a little.

Overall though, we're on the right track.

Regards,

Hey guys,

is there a way of toning down the road lines

hmm, that's a good point. Unfortunately the API doesn't support doing this. It will only display one of the 3 types: normal, satellite & hybrid.

I really am on for the idea of using the IFAS logo to donate positions

That wouldn't be a problem. The API supports custom icons.

Would it be possible to have the marker exactly over the meeting position of each club, in Limerick it would be Mary I college

It should be possible to use geocodes for this. Unfortunately they (Google) have been a bit lax in indexing Ireland. e.g. it would work for Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Tralee, Galway, Limerick and quite a few others but there are some gaping omissions; Tullamore for instance hasn't been indexed, so the club's street address would not be recognised!
The marker can be made to stay the same size no matter what the zoom level.

The downside to using these maps is the need for an exact coordinate if google does not know the streets in the locale.

So if those issues are problematic for ye I would suggest going with Seanie's version.

Anyway, I'll update the map shortly to show a few geocoded entries and the new icon.

Cheers,

Trev

I'm envisioning this map on the "clubs" page. There is no room for it on the home page. The idea of the home page is that it contains the dynamic data (not quite a reality yet). The idea being that the stuff there changes. That makes the site much more dynamic and makes the front page useful.

Bart.

Ah nuts! Hit a snag I didn't notice before as I mainly deal with the US.
Google doesn't support geocoding in Ireland! Worse still Anpost have the data but charges a fortune to let you get the coordinates of street addresses (free almost anywhere else in the world, including the US).

Sorry, that kind of puts the kabosh on getting the maps down to street level. Which means that if someone does zoom in it would show the club somewhere near the town but in the wrong location.

Sorry about that guys, never expected this to be the case. Short of bringing a GPS receiver into each club I wouldn't have an accurate enough location.

Cheers,

Trev

Does this mean Trevor that we've given up on this google idea and that we'd be better off (as there is no real gain) using a static map.
Do we really need to include a road map of Ireland so that people can find club meetings ?

Sorry about that guys, never expected this to be the case. Short of bringing a GPS receiver into each club I wouldn't have an accurate enough location.

maporama or google earth can give the lat/long. It will just need someone from each club to check and give the details. That should be good enough for plotting where the club meets, people will have to make up their own driving directions from looking at the map!

I use 53.318608, -6.248592 as the coords for Gonzaga on the google map on the SDAS site. www.southdublinastronomy.org/wiki/Gonzaga_College