Monday, July 2, 2012

Open Layers - Web Publishing

I found some free time, and I am beginning to work with Open Layers, an open source javascript library that anyone can use and edit to publish maps on the web. A lot of documentation is online but I also bought the beginner's guide, which can be purchased for $20 from the publishers website and downloaded as a PDF.  I definitely recommend reading this book!

For $60, I also bought a website domain and 10GB of hosting space for one year.  Right now, I am using sample code to experiment and to publish maps to the web.  You can check out an early example from sample code here:  http://www.myopenmap.me/.  A visitor can zoom in and out and change which Google Map base map is displayed by clicking a tab on the right and toggling a radio button.

 Google and other map providers allow you to use their basemaps for free, just be sure to follow the terms of service.  For Google, as long as your website is free and accessible to anyone, you are good to go.  Although there are limitations, for example on the size and resolution of their maps.

1 comment:

  1. Hello,

    I have just started to used Geoserver approach to make my local webGIS. However i need to publish it online. I am using POSTgreSQL, Geoserver and Geoext for connections of my vector set.

    I have a question. As i am a beginner with limited knowledge of Javascript, should i shift of OpenLayers? Can i add basic query commands in Open Layers?

    Furthermore, can i just buy a doamin and publish my OL data to that domain and it will just create that website?

    Thank you so much

    ReplyDelete