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Topic: Basic WMS setup

Hi,

Thanks to a suggestion from Paula L I'm now hoping to provide some maps on the PlantTracker website which show people the current known distribution of the species we are recording, alongside our current maps which show just the data collected by the app.

I've managed to generate the layer for an example species (Jap Knotweed) by following the instructions on this page:
http://data.nbn.org.uk/Documentation/We … _Services/

The map url is:

http://gis.nbn.org.uk/arcgis/rest/servi … rent=false

Being a non-technical person I have no idea how to overlay this on an appropriate UK map.  I'm envisaging that each page on our results pages (see http://planttracker.naturelocator.org/map/knotweed for an example) will carry a link to a static page (or a popup window with a png??) showing the NBN data overlaid on a map.

Is there a nice step by step guide that details how to do this somewhere, including where to obtain a suitable base image, how to make tweaks to the map data to make it fit the base layer (why, for example, is the west half of Ireland and the north of Scotland missing?)

Any help will be great (and, trust me, nothing is too basic!)

Cheers,
Dave

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Re: Basic WMS setup

Hi Dave
You'll need to get into developing using something like OpenLayers in order to set up a map, then to add this as a WMS layer to the map.
Seeing as you are using Indicia already on your site, there is a module in SVN called taxon_formatters and one called taxon_identifier. These give you a CCK field type specifically to hold an NBN Key, plus a display formatter that outputs that key as a map with a WMS layer loaded from the Gateway. This approach should be ideal for you, but of course it means learning a bit about CCK, Panels, and Page Manager in Drupal.
Cheers
John

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT