Wordpress mapping plugins – la croix de gattigues

This site, built with WordPress, uses a couple plug-ins for mapping. They are Leaflet Map and WP-GPX-maps.

Leaflet Map

Leaflet map allows you to display a track on a map background. The plug-in allows for use of OSM maps via MapQuest. To use MapQuest you need to sign up for an API key from their website, and for modest use like this website, the API key should be free. However, I opted not to use Mapquest. This is France and France has the IGN (Institut National de l’Information Géographique et Forestière). This institute publishes folding paper maps at many scales and the 1:25000 scale maps are outstanding for hikers. It seems that every department in the country has a hiking trail plan and these trails are all marked on the IGN maps. One point of warning though. The paper versions are sometimes out of date.

In the past few years, the IGN has also moved to the Web and now provides a tiled web map service which is used in their Géoportail. They provide a variety of map backgrounds (including satellite images, different map styles) and overlays (e.g. river basin accentuation, zoning and survey boundaries, etc) and various Javascript APIs for use by developers. The Géoportail provides an excellent range of tools and is ever improving. Because hikers are so used to the IGN 1:25000 scale maps and their specific look and feel, I decided to use an IGN webmap for this website. The maps are rendered with the plug-in using the Leaflet JavaScript library and use the new IGN “Scan-Express” look and feel. Scan-Express is very similar to the hiking maps but has slightly less detail and seems less cluttered. To use the IGN webmap tiles, I had to obtain an API key on the IGN website.

An example

WP-GPX-maps

(Edit 2021-10-30) Once used extensively on this site, I have now removed this plugin in favour of using leaflet-maps and a new leaflet maps extension allowing for display of altitude profiles and more.

2 Replies to “WordPress mapping plugins”

Bonjour,

Je viens de passer il y a quelques jours à wordpress et j’utilise également le plugin leaftlet-map. Je suis actuellement bloqué sur la cartographie opentopomap. C’est dommage, car je veux répertorier des parcours de randonnées dans les Vosges et je n’ai pas les balisages du club vosgiens qui sont disponibles en scan 25. ET je me demande comment vous avez paramétré le plugin pour obtenir la cartographie IGN. J’ai une clé. Mais je ne vois pas comment faire le shorcode qui va bien pour obtenir un résultat correct.
Pourriez-vous m’aider?
Cordialement
Claude Bernat

lcadmin says:

April 4, 2022 at 12:09 am

Bonjour Merci pour votre commentaire. Comme ma réponse est un peu longue, je vous l’ai envoyé par courriel

Reply

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Hiking in south central France

This site is about walking, mostly in south central France, specifically the Cévennes “mountain” range, the Grands Causses area with it’s plateaus and canyons, the departments of Gard with the garrigue landscapes, the Vaucluse, the Herault, sometimes the Ardèche, the Avéyron and the Drôme. There are descriptions of interesting walks, but sometimes also the non-interesting ones. There are occasional articles about the hardware and software you might use while hiking and in particular handheld GPS devices and smartphones. There are also references to cartography both in the field and on the computer screen back home. The progress in the area of web mapping in the past several years, with the arrival of services like Google Maps, Nokia Here (now “Here we go”) and the OSM Open source map service, has been spectacular.

However, hiking in this region is more than just walking with eyes focused forward or concentration on the GPS screen. It’s also about observing and understanding the landscapes, villages, farms, ancient ruins and various geological curiosities. Often the subject of interest is not the “what”, but the “why”. Why did people settle here hundreds of years ago? Why did the ancient trade routes pass this spot?

In this region, traces of human activity are everywhere – in the still occupied villages and farms, but also in the undergrowth, on the riverbanks and and on the abandoned hillsides. This site aims to explore these subjects, traveling on foot, at about 3.5 km per hour.

This site is also for people who like maps. There are maps in nearly every article, often with interactive features. Try them out.

For every walk mentioned in an article, the site provides a downloadable gpx file suitable for use on a handheld gps device. The site provides additional access to a database of some 700 circuits also complete with downloadable gpx. It is worth noting however, that a gpx track is a perishable commodity. Over time waymakings change, land owners block walking routes, obstacles appear. For this reason, when available, dates of the most recent passage on the circuits are also provided. Use with care.

Everywhere you go on these hiking routes you are likely to see a field cross. They can be in iron, stone, or wood and can be simple or ornate. These field crosses are supposed to have protected travellers from bandits – as supposedly no bandit would dare attack near a symbol of the all powerful religion.

So the french word “croix” translates to cross and holds the connotation of the cross as a religious symbol. However, in the context of this site, cross means crossroad or intersection. “La Croix de Gattigues” refers to a crossroad in a hamlet in the Gard department at which, no surprise, there is also a fine an iron cross.

Claude Bernat says:

April 3, 2022 at 4:44 pm

Bonjour,

Je viens de passer il y a quelques jours à wordpress et j’utilise également le plugin leaftlet-map. Je suis actuellement bloqué sur la cartographie opentopomap. C’est dommage, car je veux répertorier des parcours de randonnées dans les Vosges et je n’ai pas les balisages du club vosgiens qui sont disponibles en scan 25. ET je me demande comment vous avez paramétré le plugin pour obtenir la cartographie IGN. J’ai une clé. Mais je ne vois pas comment faire le shorcode qui va bien pour obtenir un résultat correct.
Pourriez-vous m’aider?
Cordialement
Claude Bernat

1. lcadmin says:
  
  April 4, 2022 at 12:09 am
  
  Bonjour Merci pour votre commentaire. Comme ma réponse est un peu longue, je vous l’ai envoyé par courriel

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