[Plugin: Basic Google Maps Placemarks] Plugin changes the coordinates

The FAQ has a link to a page that will give you the exact coordinates that Google Maps defines for a point. That might help.

Hi Ian-

Thanks for the reply.

The page you mention gives me the same coordinates that Google Maps gives me for a point. Those coordinates work by entering them directly into Google Maps, or any other Google Maps plugin I have tried. The problem seems to lie somewhere in the Placemarks plugin, as it is changing the coordinates entered. The coordinates that show up in the grayed-out boxes directly below the field are not the same as the coordinates entered. Again, this is not a problem with the actual placemarks rendered on the map, or the coordinates being entered, but with the entry field being modified by the plugin.

Thanks,
Rob

Hi Ian

I have been getting around to raising this issue myself, as sometimes I don’t want to specify a place name but rather simply specify latitude and longitude co-ordinates. I have struck the same difficulty that Rob reports, whereby the co-ordinates entered are not faithfully returned (in one case, a point I wanted to place in the middle of the Pacific ended up on the Australian mainland!)

In the previous map plug-in that I was using (Google Map Shortcode) there was a checkbox (unselected by default) next to where one could enter the latitude and longitude directly (as opposed to entering an address). Ticking this checkbox asked the plug-in to “Verify this latitude and longitude using Geocoding. This could overwrite the point address.” By leaving the checkbox unticked, exact latitude and longitude co-ordinates can be entered and returned. Ticking the checkbox, however, can result in an error (eg the address can’t be located) or incorrect location being returned.

Does your plug-in verify the latitude and longitude using Geocoding (or similar), and is this why the point address that Rob and I (and other people, from earlier threads here) are specifying is being over-written (sometimes by many degrees, especially where no landmarks/towns are nearby)?

If so, would it be possible to implement a similar checkbox to that above in your plug-in?

Thanks in advance for looking into this.

Yeah, the value of the Address field is geocoded into coordinates (even if it already was a set of coordinates), and those coordinates are what are used to set a placemark on the map. It’s odd, though, because the plugin uses Google Maps to do the geocoding.

Can you give me some examples of coordinates that are changed?

Hi Ian

Here’s the gross example that I alluded to earlier.

I input the latitude and longitude of
-4.915833,-157.5
to position a marker (cruise ship) in the Pacific Ocean.

After saving the placemark, these were the latitude and longitude co-ordinates that the plug-in returned
-22.7359095,140.0187653
and the cruise ship marker is on the Australian mainland!

In order to get the cruise ship close to where I wanted it, I had to use “Bay of Wreaks, Kiribati” as the address
(which returned this latitude and logitude 1.8616363,-157.3205418)
and give up on using the latitude and longitude co-ordinates I preferred (I actually wanted an “at sea” marker to be “at sea”!).

If you look on this map
https://www.polioaustralia.org.au/?page_id=4733
you’ll see two cruise ship markers (you’ll need to zoom out a bit and probably drag the map to the left to see the Kiribati marker). The cruise ship in the Pacific was placed using the Kiribati address above, while the cruise ship on the Australian mainland was placed by attempting to input the -4.915833,-157.5 latitude and longitude directly.

As I said earlier, this is a pretty gross example. Other changes to co-ordinates entered directly don’t seem to be as bad, but certainly they are “off” where you entered them enough to be annoying.

Hopefully, being able to override geocoding for latitude and longitude points entered directly will be possible and should solve the issue.

Can you please let me know when you’ve finished looking at my example above because I’d like to remove the land-locked cruise ship before my site visitors wonder what I’m playing at ??

Thanks Ridgididgi, you can take it down now. I think the best approach, rather than adding an extra option for users, is to have the plugin automatically detect whether or not the entered address is a valid set of coordinates or not. If it is, then it can bypass the geocoding function, and if not, it’ll be geocoded.

I’ve added that to my TODO list.

Thanks, Ian. That’s great, I’ll look forward to this enhancement.

Also, thanks again for being so responsive to suggestions about your plug-in, it is greatly appreciated.

Version 1.6.1 has this implemented. See the revised FAQ for details on coordinate notation.

Hi Ian

That’s great news, thanks for the super-fast implementation – tested and working perfectly ??

Ridgididgi

Excellent! Thank you so much for you responsiveness, Ian!

Thanks Ridgi for jumping in and helping out.