Geospatial Content Management System

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS) is a Content Management System where objects (users, images, articles, blogs..) can have a Latitude, Longitude position to be displayed on an online interactive map. In addition the online maps link to informational pages (wiki pages essentially) on the data represented.

A GeoCMS can have a map of registered users allowing to build communities geographically, by looking at users location. The help of wiki for describing geographical layers present a simple way to solve the problem of geographical metadata.

Since the advent of Google Maps and the publication of its API, numerous users have used online maps to illustrate their web pages. Google Maps is in itself not a GeoCMS but is a powerful building block.

Similarly Mapserver is also a powerful building block for creating GeoCMS.

TikiWiki was the first CMS to become a GeoCMS in early 2003, it is now becoming popular on various other CMS especially since the publication of the Mapserver API in 2002 to many scripting languages: PHP, Python, Perl, Java,...

[edit] GeoCMS List

[edit] GeoCMS comparison

Drupal Midgard Plone TikiWiki WordPress
Ability to store locations √ √ √ √ √
Number of locations per content item Multiple In/about/at See specific plugin 1
Maps on content items Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, MapBuilder Mapstraction See specific plugin Mapstraction
Syndication formats GeoRSS, KML GeoRSS See specific plugin GeoRSS, KML
Geocoding √ (Mapstraction, Yahoo, GeoNames) See specific plugin √ (Mapstraction)


User location sources Manual, SMS, Plazes, GeoRSS, ICBM See specific plugin

Mapstraction supports GoogleMaps, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Map24, MultiMap, MapQuest, and FreeEarth.