After an extremely long wait, and an audience of patient users, the DotNetNuke Map module has been released! I'd like to first thank everyone who offered their time and ideas during the beta period - all 80 of you provided an excellent structure for the Map module to run through a variety of DNN versions, server environments, and user skill levels. We have a variety of new enhancements already coming in the next month - so be on the lookout for the next version release now that we finally made it through the tracker.

Without further ado, the Map module provides the ability for you to plot your custom data points onto a Map, currently supporting only the interface provided by the Google Map API. Four interfaces come out of the box with the Map module -

• Standard Mode - Display all the points for the designated Module, simultaneously.
• Playback Mode - Display all the points for the designated Module, in the order which they appear in your source data. This data can have associated times and dates that control the functionality of the playback. The most common example of this is the provided "Regions Online" map which plots the Users Online data - one point for each world Region, in the order which that region was first added to your user base. A very effective display, and fun to watch!
• Positional Mode - Displays the points in your data source by Longitude, Latitude within a target radius. Whenever the user clicks the map, the points are automatically fetched from the server (via Ajax of course) and plotted on the map around the selected point.
• Directory Mode - Displays the points in your data source within a configurable directory structure. This directory, similar to most other map based directory components also uses the Positional Mode interaction, so you data is easily displayed regionally.

The Map itself can store and retrieve the points in either the default SQL tables used by the module, a source based on the Users contained in your system, or alternatively a custom query (even a connected query outside of your DotNetNuke database). The source of the data and the interface are stored as separate configurations so that they can be used together or apart within the DNN instance. With that ability you can create different views of your data with similar look and feel, while changing the source on a module by module basis. Also, you can setup one set of data and swap the interface.

All of the interaction provided by the module uses Ajax functionality for fetching the points, meaning that the page performs at its peak, without loss. The framework behind the Map module provides the ability to create new interfaces for other third part mapping solutions (soon within the module will be both Yahoo and Microsoft).

1. Download DNN::Map
2. Watch the DNN::Map Tutorial
3. Read the DNN::Map documentation

Finally, and by all means, please give us your opinions, reviews and suggestions so we can improve its capabilities. It's been a great voyage so far, and continued growth on the product is exciting for the Map team. Grab the module and take it for a spin!