Map supporting community entries?

[selvberging]

We run an online community for homesteading, aimed at recruiting and helping people expand on their self sustinance efforts.

One of hte greatest obstacles for people aquiring live stock or a vegetable garden is being enslaved… with gardens and animals sometimes requiring attention up to several times a day, it becomes too big of a commitment for many to take on all alone. However, within a local community there will always be many with similar interests that are willing to back each other up, in case of sickness, need to take a holiday or go to a party. I take feed your chickens if you water my tomatoes. All they need is a solution to bring them together – namely our community and the solution we plan to build.

What I want to create is a solution where users can submit their personal contact details, their physical location and what they have to offer. In addition I want users to be able to submit local businesses and organizations that are tailored to the homesteader, for instance local farms that sell directly to the consumer or”pick your own”, local beekeeping organizations.

I want this to show up in a google map. Different types of entries should have different icons and filters.

I have for a land rover forum previosly created something similar, but it is anything but user friendly in terms of users themselves being able to add entries. I want the community to be able to adminsiter it themselves. I therefore need some type of solution where users easily submit info, that this is automotically published, and that the administrator is informed when there is a new entry or a change to an entry. I am thinking that the user adds entries through some sort of form (fields, check boxes, drop downs, captcha, etc). I would also need to be able to export all the e-mail addresses (categorized by type of entry) so that I can contact those on the list.

Does such a plugin exist? If not, who would you reccomend I go about building one? I have very limited programming skills.

[Serges]

Can you clarify, you want to post the information, which you got from users, on the map? Like make a marker with their address and insert the information to marker description?
“their physical location” will users manually write their place or you want to have GetCurrentPosition function?

[selvberging]

S/

You got it spot on. Yes, a marker and insert the information to the marker description.

Ideally the user should enter all their info in a form, including the location (street address, complete with postal code, street number, etc). It should not use the GetCurrentLocation.

There may be different category of markers. For instance Public or Private entries. By private is a person entering their own location. Ideally it should be required to have an account, and even more ideally the map should not show description to users who are not logged in – only the marker. Public is an entery where anyone can post the location of any business and should be visible to guests as well as those that are logged in. Ofcourse ideal is not the same as a “must have”.

Here are som examples of different types of locations (categories)
-Community member (private)
-Local business (public):
–Farm that offer “pick your own”
–Farm open for visits and with livestock
–Organisation (i.e. the local beekeeper organization)
–Other POI

There is much else to be desired in my scope. What I am hoping for is that there is some out of the box plugin, or combination of plugins, that could be used, without too much coding – hopefully nothing but configuration.

One of the other things that is desired is to present all the input in a web page (table), complete with filters and sorting features. For instance being able to filter by region and/or municipality, location type, services offerred, types of animals on the farm, types of vegetables/fruit/berries, and so on. The query would return a list of locations, complete with all contact details, descriptions, uploaded image, list of vegetables/and or animals (complete with icons), etc. This would ofcourse require an even more extensive form and a much more complex solution. If the community only gets a simple map in the first version, it will make a big difference.

I have more time than money, but I am not broke…