Points of Interest

The topics of communities are manifold. But no matter what a community is about, in many cases interesting locations are behind the topics for the members as well. With Points of Interest, you can give your members the opportunity to share these locations with other members.

Description

This application for WoltLab Suite allows a comprehensive management of locations by the members and their representation in overviews and on a map based on Google Maps. Points of Interest (POI) offers the usual functionality of modern applications for WoltLab Suite Core: subscriptions, feeds, comments, reporting, moderation, likes, tags and more. Activity notifications and points encourage your members to enter POIs, and with extensive user permissions, you specify in detail which users can do what, and how they can do it.


POIs are created by the users in the frontend, whereby the location is selected via a map. In addition to a category, for which a marker for the map display can be set individually in the ACP, a title, a teaser (short description text) and a text must be entered. If multilingualism is activated, the creator can select the language for the POI.


The existing POIs are displayed in a WSC-typical tabular overview, which offers various sorting options as well as a filtering by categories; in addition, the WSC search can be used to better locate POIs. Alternatively, all POIs can be displayed on a map. Filters and a search are available here as well.

In the overview and on the map, only titles and teasers of the POI are displayed. To get all the information about a POI, it must be called explicitly. On the POI page, POIs may be marked as 'visited' by the members, if this function is activated in the ACP.


Furthermore, a download function for POIs (single, all, POIs of a category / member) is available. For this purpose, the GPX format is used in version 1.1. POIs are represented as waypoints.


From version 3.1.4 / 5.2.1 it is possible to enter coordinates directly in the decimal system and to import POIs in GPX format. Due to the necessary reverse geocoding queries that burden the Google Maps account, the import is limited to 5 POIs each.

Expandability

With optional packages, Points of Interest can be integrated into JCoins, Community Bot and Extended Search. In addition, a branding-free extension is available to hide the visible copyright.

Configuration

The configuration in the ACP includes categorization, a small marker management, some application-specific settings, and setting the user group permissions. For the map, the existing system settings are used.

Additionally, you may define WSC-typical options fields for POIs.


Since Points of Interest is an application, it may be necessary to make adjustments to the server (rewrite / .htaccess or nginx equivalent) if link rewrite (SEO) is enabled. In addition, a valid browser API key for Google Maps must be configured in the ACP.

Note

  • In addition to WoltLab Suite Core, Points of Interest requires the WoltLab package "Infractions", which is automatically installed when using WoltLab applications.
  • Google limits the number of free geocoding requests and map calls. For more information, see API Usage Limitations

Notes on Data Protection

  • When creating an entry in the frontend, this extension saves the user name and the user ID of the creator in the database (table poi1_poi). If the storage of IP addresses is activated via the system configuration, the IP address of the user is also saved when creating the entry. Deleting the entry will delete that data. When the user is deleted, the user name and, if configured, IP address remain in the database.
    Existing IP addresses can be deleted with the database query UPDATE poi1_poi SET ipAddress = '';.
  • Comments, likes, warnings and reports created within the extension are managed via system functions. Typically, the user name and user ID are stored in the database when they are created. Content sharing is also done through system functions.
  • If the visit function is activated, visits are stored with the user ID of the visitor in the database (table poi1_poi_visit). Deleting the user deletes the corresponding entry in the database.
  • When you create an entry, view entries, and access the map, users are connected to the Google Maps map service (Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). The location data and the IP address of the user are transferred. This information is typically stored on a Google server in the United States.
  • Uninstalling the extension will erase all stored data.

Published Versions

All given prices are final prices. According to the § 19 UStG (small business status) we do not charge the german sales tax and consequently do not account it.