This book is intended for people building Drupal websites who would like to visualize their content on a map. Maps are powerful and can tell a rich story. A map is instantly readable, but at the same time almost infinitely revealing. With the rise of maps on the Internet and now on cell phones, the way we navigate our lives has changed. Recognizing this, more web developers are integrating location into websites and applications.

Drupal is a versatile content management system, and because of that, it has been extended through many contributed modules to support mapping. Drupal is not primarily a mapping platform, however, so mapping in Drupal can be tricky. But because Drupal is so extendable, mapping in Drupal can be adapted to your specific needs. This book will help you navigate these complexities to create beautiful and engaging maps.

By the end of this book, you will be able to create a website with a map that automatically centers on the user’s location. The map will include events and local groups that have been added through intuitive interfaces. Rather than using one of the maps from Google or Bing that have become so familiar, perhaps you will create a custom base map that fits the color scheme of your site. And rather than some pink pins, the events and local groups shown on your map will be marked with custom icons created for your site.

We assume you know how to install Drupal, install contributed modules, and enable themes; maybe you have already built a site that is used publicly. If you have not done these things or feel you do not have a great grasp on Drupal, don’t stop reading this book just yet. Read over the first few chapters to get a feel for what is possible, take that enthusiasm and read over some other tutorials or books to learn the basics of site building with Drupal, and then come back. There are some great titles to get you started working with Drupal, some of which are listed in Appendix A. But don’t worry, we will try our best to not assume too much.

Later in this book, we will look at writing code to extend existing mapping modules. When we get there, we will assume you know a little about writing Drupal modules; at a minimum you should understand how to create a simple custom module for a site and be familiar with Drupal hooks. If you are new to writing Drupal modules, there are some books listed in Appendix A that will help you get up to speed developing for Drupal.

Drupal and web mapping come with specific terminology that is helpful when talking about these technologies, like modules, nodes, map tiles, and WKT. If you are new to Drupal or web mapping and these terms are not familiar, take a moment to read Appendix C now. We will also be explaining some of these terms throughout the book, particularly in Chapter 2.

This book is written for Drupal 7, which was released in January 2011. Most of what we shall discuss will use contributed modules found on http://drupal.org. As we write this book, most of the modules mentioned are in active development, and they may or may not have full releases specifically for Drupal 7. Though we are confident that the ideas and structures will remain consistent, interfaces and module versions may change a bit from what you read in this book. We will do our best to keep this publication up to date as this dynamic topic changes. Errata will be listed at the URL in How to Contact Us.

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

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Alan and Thomas would like to thank the book’s technical reviewers, including Denis Wood, Sara Hodges, Robert Holmes, Joseph Bachana, Ronald Turnbull, Théodore Biadala, Reuben Turk, Ankur Rishi, and Patrick Hayes. Thanks also to Julie Steele from O’Reilly for guiding us through the writing process. And a very special thanks to all of the people who have contributed to Drupal and open source mapping over the years.

Alan has been working on the OpenLayers module for Drupal for almost three years and would like to thank all the amazing people that have helped out on the project and made it the successful project it is today. This includes all the committers, patch providers, documenters, and screencasters; thank you all very much. He would also like to thank the Drupal community as a whole for being so supportive and welcoming over the years; it is projects like Drupal that really show how open source is more than just code. He would also like to personally thank Ellie F. for supporting him through writing this book.

Thomas would like to thank his father, Ronald Turnbull, both for tirelessly editing the entire book and for teaching him as a five-year-old to read maps. He would also like to thank his geography teachers over the years, especially Irene McCann, George Dalling, and Bob Hodgart. Thanks go to Wendy Brawer at Green Map for introducing him to Drupal and the concept of open source mapmaking. Thanks finally to Sara Hodges for her input and support.