Simple Location

Adds geographic location support to pages and posts.

Author:David Shanske (profile at wordpress.org)
WordPress version required:4.9
WordPress version tested:5.9.2
Plugin version:4.4.15
Added to WordPress repository:07-04-2015
Last updated:03-02-2024
Rating, %:100
Rated by:7
Plugin URI:https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-location...
Total downloads:28 598
Active installs:600+
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Supports adding geo coordinates, a location taxonomy, and a textual location description to a post, comment, user, or attachment. Supports adding weather data to a post or to a widget based on location.
Offers choice of map displays. It supports retrieving location using the HTML5 geolocation API by default. Clicking the location icon or ‘Lookup Location’ will retrieve the location.

As it stores the GeoData in the classic WordPress format, Geodata can also be added from other plugins.

Automatically saves location data from image metadata when uploaded as well.

Offers the opportunity to change the displayed timezone on a per-post basis for those posts from far off locations and set this based on the coordinates of the location.
While Gutenberg compatible, this is not built for Gutenberg.

Privacy and Data Notice

Simple Location stores location and weather data inside posts, attachments, comments, and term meta…optionally other post types. This data respects a public, private or
protected setting. Attachment data is automatically extracted from images if location is present, which could be extracted by any third-party downloading the picture
unless removed. For all other data, it is provided by the user, who decides its ultimate use. Location data is made available through a geolocation provider…the default is currently
HTML5 browser geolocation, for which the user must give consent to share). Other information is secured through use of third-party APIs to identify a
location, calculate elevation, display maps, and weather conditions.

Locations and Venues

Locations uses WordPress taxonomies to allow you to generate an archive page of all posts from that location and giving it a permalink on your site. Locations are meant to reflect a more general
location…for example, “Here are posts I made in California.”

Locations are divided by administrative areas. The hierarchy for locations is:
* Country
* Region – state, county, or province level.
* Locality – city, town, or village level

You can choose to display the location over the textual address field. There is an option in settings to change this behavior.

The reverse geocoding system attempts to consistently retrieve the country code, region code, and locality for the location and add them to the location taxonomy. This can be potentially problematic, as if the returns
from the locations added aren’t consistent, it will duplicate and explode the list of terms. This is the same issue that has held back venues.

Locations are matched using the country code, region code, and locality field, and therefore, you can edit the displayed name or the region code without issue. Due to matching issues, you may have to make some manual changes and there may be some occasional duplication.

There is no top level Location page, /location included in the plugin. You can create a page at this location and use a custom template to allow it to show a list of your locations.

Venues are meant to reflect a specific location, such as a business or point of interest. Venues were originally set up as a taxonomy, and were in the plugin unimplemented for several versions. However,
due to various changes since that was set up, they were switched to a custom post type. Under this setup, each venue is represented by a URL on the site that posts can be linked to. The URL contains
information about the venue.

Zones

Zones allow for geofencing. You can set coordinates and a radius around them. If you set location to a place within a zone, the default behavior is to replace the location
with a preset Name and hide the coordinates. This allows you to protect private locations such as your home, or your place of business. For Micropub, it will set the location
as protected if the location is in the zone and the location-visibility property is not set. For the post editor in WordPress, looking up the location of an item inside the
zone will result in the visibility being set to protected and the name being set to the zone name. This can be overridden.

Zones are replaced as of 5.0.0 with Private Venues

Weather

Weather consists of at minimum the current conditions and temperature but includes future parameters for use such as pressure, wind speed, wind direction degree, etc. Weather widgets are available
that can be set to a specific location, a user, station ID, or airport code. Station ID is available from supported providers for weather stations, for example from a Personal Weather Station(PWS).

Stations

Stations allow for using a custom data source for weather data. This source should be a URL that returns a JSON object. When using the Custom Station provider for weather, it
will look for when one of the stations defined is within 10km of your current location. It will then use the return as the current weather conditions. Please note that the
return must be in the format documented in the code.

WordPress GeoData

WordPress Geodata is an existing standardized way to store geodata about a post, user, comment, or term.

It consists of four fields: latitude, longitude, public, and address. This matches up with the HTML5 Geolocation fields. The W3C Geolocation Specification
also provides for properties of altitude, accuracy, altitudeAccuracy, speed, and heading, which may be stored. Map Zoom is also stored as a geodata property.

Timezone is also stored as a property and is derived from the location by default or set manually.

In order to access private location information, the following custom capabilities are added to WordPress:
* ‘read_{$object_type}location’ – Whether or not a user is allowed to read information locations for object types: posts, comments, terms, users. A user is always allowed to read the location from their objects.
* ‘edit{$object_type}_location’ – Whether or not a user is allowed to edit information locations for object types: posts, comments, terms, users. A user is always allowed to read the location from their objects.

Providers

The plugin is designed to be extensible and anyone could write a plugin that would add additional providers.

  • Map Providers are services that offer an API to retrieve maps, which are displayed on posts with a location. Providers include MapBox, Google, Mapquest, HERE, LocationIQ, Geoapify, TomTom, and Bing.
  • Geocoding Providers take geo coordinates and look up the actual location/address for textual display. Geocoding Providers include Nominatim, HERE, the Mapquest hosted version of Nominatim, Google, Bing, LocationIQ, OpenRoute and Geonames. They also support looking up coordinate for physical addresses
  • Venue providers, similar to Geocoding providers, search for locations from coordinates, however, instead of returning street addresses, or municipality, it returns a list of places or venues.
  • Elevation Providers optionally derive the elevation from an API when not available. Elevation is used to estimate altitude and adjust estimated sunrise/sunset levels accordingly.
  • Location Providers attempt to determine your location to add it to a post. Providers include HTML5 Browser Geolocation, a Provider that takes the location setting out of the author profile, a provider that returns the exact
    location of a three letter airport code, and Compass, a self-hosted option for storing your location.
  • Weather Providers retrieve weather data about your location and include OpenWeatherMap, Pirate Weather, Dark Sky, Weatherstack, WeatherBit, HERE and the US National Weather Service. HERE, Pirate Weather, Dark Sky, WeatherBit, and Weatherstack do not support stations. There is also an option for custom station URLs that must return the properties as they are stored in WordPress.
    ** The National Weather Service(US) uses their station lookup API to find the closest weather station, and uses weather from there. Therefore, if this returns no options, if you are outside the US, it will return no weather.
    ** The Met Office(UK) uses the distance from your current location to the nearest UK weather station and finds the closest one. However, if the nearest station is more than 100km away, it will return nothing.
    ** For Weather services like the NWS, Met Office, and the Custom Provider, where coverage is not worldwide, if nothing is found, a fallback provider can be set and used.
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