Maps are essential aspects of your corporate website. Our built-in maps can show any content type with a location field, whether it has an address or is using coordinates, and you can use content labels and sites to further filter the display. You can also use the OC Location content type to display locations that don’t have a complete page, such as showing health centers or clinics that don’t have an internal page on your site.
This article will describe some creative examples of maps we’ve seen.
Planned Construction and Roadworks
Ensuring your community members can avoid or plan around planned construction or roadworks will help reduce frustration with your city or council. A map is a great way to do that because you can include an address search for users to search for residences, workplaces, or schools, and link out to the main pages for works and projects.
There are two main ways to do this:
- Use layers that specify OC Project pages or OC Location pages
- Import a KML or KMZ layer to show larger projects or works that encompass extensive locations
You are not limited to using one or the other method, but remember that using a layer based on pages means you will need to have pages to link to.
Service Locations
A map of service locations can be helpful for everyone visiting your site, but especially for new residents in your area. You can use the OC Location content type to link to places you might not necessarily have a complete page for. This may include helpful and essential services such as:
- Fire stations
- Police stations
- Council or customer service offices
- Welfare centers for services such as government payments or job-seeking help
- Shelters or food banks
- Waste collection centers or depositories
- Childcare centers or schools
- Health centers, hospitals, or clinics
- Defibrillator locations
- Community centers
Locations like this will often have external websites instead of dedicated pages on your site, so the OC Location content type is perfect. It allows you to list and display the location while redirecting users to the relevant service's website page. We recommend using an address search for this map as well, so people can see what’s located near them.
Parking Zones
Something else you can display using an imported file is parking zones in the area. Importing this layer allows you to include information such as time limits, costs, permit parking, disabled parking, school zones, no-standing areas, or bus zones.
When creating the file, you can also ensure that your zones are represented in the way you need to display them. For example, a 30-minute street parking zone could be represented as a green line, but a wider area of 2-hour parking could be displayed as a transparent blue shape.
Remember to include a legend so site visitors know how zones are represented, and ensure your colors are accessible; as many maps use a light grey to represent roads, using grey to indicate a parking zone would be confusing.
Trails, Tours, and Public Art
Other content types, such as OC Parks, OC Events, and OC Venues have location fields as well, so you can use these to display points of public interest like events, walking trails, tours, public art, theaters, or art centers. If you use the ATDW module, you can also create maps for tourism sites that include OC Accommodation and OC Tourist Attraction pages.
In your layers you can use content labels to further specify which pages display with which label, so site visitors can find exactly what they’re looking for. We recommend using an address search as well, as this will help users find points of interest in their area.