Absolutely the BEST plugin for mapping

I am a traveler and geotag almost all of my photos, and have a lot of location-based content. I’ve been searching for a good mapping solution for my blog for over a decade now – I even (started) building one myself. For my latest site redesign, I had a lot of specific requirements which I thought would require a custom development effort. I wanted to use Stamen designs watercolor map tiles, I wanted to be able to import many markers at once from my photos, my foursquare checkins, etc. and the Pro version of the plugin supports this all with ease. Actually, at first the import functionality wasn’t available, but when I wrote to Robert saying that it would be really cool if it were, it was already on the list for the next release. I’ve found that as a plugin developer he not only responds to customer feedback, he’s often thought of things — and implemented them — before I can request them. Another thing that I love about this plugin is the way that it alerts you to problems caused by other plugins. I think we’ve all had those situations where we install a plugin or two, then later discover something has gone haywire with another, and have to backtrack to figure out the problem. I love that the plugin can detect outside conflicts and report them immediately. It’s undoubtedly saved me hours of troubleshooting.

Finally, as someone that has thousands of places to map, I was concerned about scalability. I’ve thrown 4 years of geo-tagged photos, blog posts and check-ins at this plugin, and it handles it all, in a single map, with ease. I’ve tried a lot of other mapping solutions, and this is always the killer – they may seem fine until you have a few hundred pins, and then grind to a halt. Not so with this plugin. I’ve even used it for some fun dynamic purposes like having attendees at our local TED conference map where they’d traveled. You might imagine that’s a lot of places collectively. I totally trusted the plugin, and it did not disappoint – and the gorgeous full-screen mode was a big hit with attendees exploring the map on a big screen.

A lot of plugins seem to be side projects – with so-so support and infrequent updates. That’s not the case here. The plugin is updated regularly and the support is top-notch. The updates are managed professionally and there are never any unexpected surprises!

I don’t normally get emotional about blog plugins, but I could go on for ages about how much I love MapsMarker Pro. The upgrade is absolutely worth the price and then some.