It’s a wise idea that every website has a address location map on it’s website, for that reason Google maps is just great.
To install Google maps capability to joomla one can use a plugin called Google Maps .
You can straighly download Joomla’s Googlemap plugin from here
Afterwards use Extension Manager to install the plugin e.g. follow:
Extensions -> Install/Uninstall (Choose File)
and click on Upload File & Install button.
To further enable and configure the Joomla Googlemap plugin you will have to go to the location:
Extensions -> Plugin Manager
Therein you will have to find and enable the Google Maps plugin which is to be found in the column named Plugin Manager
On my Joomla installation the plugin was located in the second page with modules, so if you don’t find the module on the listing with modules on the first page, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Next button.
Therein in the list you will most likely notice Google Maps use the Enable button to enable it.
Next step is to configure the plugin, to do so press on the plugin name Google Maps
All configuration necessery here is to place Googlemaps API Key in the respective field (you will see it among config options).
Issuing a new Google Maps api key takes just few seconds, if you already have a gmail account just go to http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html and take few seconds to issue the key.
You will get the key right on your gmail account after being issued (to repeat myself issuing takes few seconds so no worrier here).
Once having the key place it in the Googlemaps API Key field and configuring Address (which is one of the list of many options the plugin provides) you will be done with configuration.
To display a google map the location you just configured go to the Article Manager , select the article where you want the google mapslocation picture of your address to appear and type in the Article something like:
{mosmap|text='Exact street address location'|zoom='15'|zoomType='Large'|zoomNew='0'}
After you saved the article a very nice Google map showing you the location’s streets will appear on your web page in the article link where placed.
You can further conifgure a number of things related to the google maps just embedded into joomla, one thing you might want to play with is the zoom level.You see in below’s code is equal to 15, e.g. zoom=’15’
Set it to another one if you want to regulate your googlemaps zoom level.
For more thoroughful options take a look at the extensive plugin documentation and play with the many settings
