Maps Widget for Google Maps vs Slick Google Map

Tired of buggy & slow Google Maps plugins that take hours to setup? With Maps Widget for Google Maps you’ll have a perfect map with a thumbnail & lightbox in minutes! No nonsense Google maps – we know you’re in a hurry! Join 100,000+ happy Google maps users. If you’ve already switched to Gutenberg grab our free Google Maps Gutenberg Block plugin. Check out some examples on the Maps Widget for Google Maps site or give us a shout on Twitter @WebFactoryLtd. General Google Maps Widget options title address Thumbnail Google map options Maps Widget for Google Maps thumbnail uses the Google Maps Static Maps API. It loads the entire google map in only one request compared to 20+ requests it takes other Google maps plugins to load them. This ensures your site loads as fast as possible! Custom google map size – map width & map height Choose any google map type you prefer – road map, satellite map, terrain map, hybrid map, or custom map image to save money on API calls (PRO only) Plenty of google map color schemes – default, blue, bright, gowalla, gray, gray #2, mapbox, midnight, neon, refreshed, paper, ultra light + any custom google map style you build in PRO zoom level pin type pin color pin size pin label custom map pin icon – any image can be used 1500+ map pins library in PRO link type – lightbox map, custom URL, replace thumbnail map with interactive google map (PRO), immediately show interactive google map (PRO) or disable link image format google map language hide widget title text above google map text below google map Interactive Google map options Interactive google maps loads in a lightbox or as an in-place replacement for the thumbnail Google map if your using Maps Widget for Google Maps PRO. It has all the standard interactive google map features users are accustomed too. lightbox size – map width & map height (auto-adjusted on smaller screens) or fullscreen map in PRO map mode – place + in PRO: directions, search, view & google street view map type – road & satellite map color scheme – 15 map styles & any custom google map style in PRO pins clustering – PRO feature map zoom level lightbox skin – light, dark + 20 extra in PRO lightbox features – close on overlay click, close on esc key, close button & show map title map language header text footer text Shortcode by using the [gmw id=”#”] shortcode you can display the google map in any page, post, or custom post type (PRO feature) Multiple Pins full clustering and filtering support for pins on Google maps – demos available on site you can add unlimited pins with custom markers and descriptions to thumbnail and interactive Google maps (PRO feature) every map pin has the following options: show on the map thumbnail and/or interactive map, set custom map pin image, set on-click behavior: open custom description bubble, open URL in new/same tab or do nothing PRO version of Maps Widget for Google Maps offers more than 50 extra features and options including multiple map pins support, map pin clustering, pins library, skins, export, import and widget cloning features, Google Analytics integration and premium, USA based support. Read more about the PRO version on the official Maps Widget for Google Maps site. Showcase & What others say about Maps Widget for Google Maps see a live example of Maps Widget for Google Maps showing off server locations around the world on Bitcatcha voted on the Top 100 List by WordPressian made it on the Tidy Repo as “well supported Google Maps plugin” reviewed 5/5 by Web Smush one of 3 best Google map plugins by The Torque Mag “an easier way to add Google maps to your site” says WP Beginner Design Crazed puts in on the top 20 Google maps list InkThemes shows how easy it is to use Maps Widget for Google Maps IndexWP calls it a “handy google maps plugin” A Painless Guide For Adding Google Maps In WordPress by WHSR Maps Widget for Google Maps Translators (thank you!) English – original 🙂 Swedish – Sofia Asklund Spanish – Jesus Garica Croatian – Gordan from Web factory Ltd German – Karimba French – Karimba Chinese simplified – Wyeoh Chinese traditional – Wyeoh Dutch – Arno Ukrainian – Victor Shutovskiy Serbian – Ogi Djuraskovic from FirstSiteGuide Russian – Ivanka License info Select2 v4, licensed under MIT Colorbox 1.6, licensed under MIT

A simple, intuitive Google Map / OpenStreetMap plugin that installs as a Gutenberg block and a shortcode. Packed with useful features — geo-mashup of posts, KML overlays, marker icons, address geocoding — and fully free and open source. No subscriptions, no SaaS, no telemetry. Slick Google Map lets you embed maps using either: Google Maps — requires your own API key (configurable per-site). Leaflet / OpenStreetMap — no key required, free tile service. Features: Insert maps via the Slick Google Map Gutenberg block (with a multi-marker repeater) or the [slick_map] shortcode. Classic Editor users get a Slick Map media button above the editor that opens a dialog with the same repeater. Marker geo-mashup — aggregate every post/page that has lat/lng custom fields onto a single map. KML and GPX overlays — drop a track or boundary onto any map. KML works on both providers; GPX is Leaflet-only. Address geocoding — write address="Vienna, Austria" instead of coordinates. Geocoded once per address and cached for 30 days. Uses your Google Geocoding API key if set, falls back to Nominatim/OSM otherwise. Coordinate formats — accepts decimal (48.2082) and DMS (48°12'29.5"N) in any marker. Marker icons — bundled set of 13 modern SVG pins (default, restaurant, lodging, cafe, bar, museum, airport, rail, shop, camera, mountain, castle, religious), plus your own URL. Legacy filenames from the 2014-era plugin are auto-aliased. Map controls — toggle the zoom / map-type / street-view / scroll-wheel / drag controls per map. Layers — Google bicycling and traffic overlays on demand. 45° aerial tilt — passed through to Google as tilt: 45. Only takes visible effect on vector Map IDs, or on satellite/hybrid view over the specific cities where Google has 45° aerial imagery. No effect on raster maps or on Leaflet. Custom Google styles JSON — for branded maps without cloud-styled Map IDs. Wiki-style links in marker titles: [[https://example.com|Display text]] becomes a real link. Compatible with WordPress page caches — no per-visitor state in the rendered HTML, no AJAX side-effects. No fixed-cost dependencies — Leaflet / OSM is free; Google Maps is pay-as-you-go with a generous monthly free tier (≈28k map loads/month at no charge). History: Slick Google Map 1.0 is a rewrite of the original plugin version 0.3, which was itself a fork of the Comprehensive Google Map Plugin by Alexander Zagniotov (2011–2014). Version 1.0.0 is a complete rewrite for WordPress 6.4+ and PHP 8.1+ — see the “Parity & rewrite” section below for what changed. Insert a map via the Slick Google Map Gutenberg block, the Slick Map media button in the Classic Editor, or the [slick_map] shortcode. Optionally aggregate posts/pages that have lat/lng custom fields onto a single map (“geo-mashup”), and overlay a KML or GPX file. Shortcode [slick_map lat="48.2082" lng="16.3738" zoom="13" height="400px" provider="leaflet"] Geo-mashup of posts and pages: [slick_map mashup="post,page"] KML or GPX overlay: [slick_map kml="https://example.com/track.kml"] [slick_map provider="leaflet" gpx="https://example.com/hike.gpx"] KML works with both providers; GPX requires the Leaflet provider (Google’s Maps JS API does not natively render GPX). Markers with addresses and custom icons (nested [marker] children): [slick_map zoom="6"] [marker address="Vienna, Austria" title="Home"] [marker lat="52.5" lng="13.4" title="Berlin" icon="https://example.com/star.png"] [/slick_map] Each [marker] accepts address (geocoded once and cached) or explicit lat/lng, plus optional title and icon. The icon attribute accepts either an https://… URL pointing to your own image, or one of the bundled short names: default, restaurant, lodging, cafe, bar, museum, airport, rail, shop, camera, mountain, castle, religious. Legacy filenames from the 2014-era plugin (1-default.png, museum_naval.png, hotel_0star.png, …) are auto-aliased to the nearest modern equivalent. For geo-mashup markers, set a marker_icon custom field on each post to override the default pin for just that post. Map controls and layers Toggle Google’s built-in UI: zoomcontrol, maptypecontrol, streetviewcontrol, scrollwheel, draggable (all default true). Google-only overlays: showbike="true", showtraffic="true". 45° aerial tilt: tilt="45". Only takes visible effect on a Google vector Map ID, or in satellite/hybrid view over cities where Google has 45° imagery. Ignored elsewhere. Custom Google map styles JSON: styles='[{"featureType":"poi","stylers":[{"visibility":"off"}]}]' (ignored when a Map ID is configured — cloud styling takes precedence). DMS coordinates Marker lat / lng values accept either decimal (48.2082) or DMS form (48°12'29.5"N). Wiki-style links Marker titles support [[https://example.com|Display text]] to embed real links, or [[Plain Page]] for unlinked highlighted text. Geocoding When a Google Maps API key is configured the plugin uses the Google Geocoding API (same Cloud project as Maps; enable Geocoding API alongside Maps JavaScript). Otherwise it falls back to Nominatim/OpenStreetMap. Results are cached in a 30-day transient per address, so each unique address is geocoded at most once. Privacy Using the Google provider loads scripts and tiles from maps.googleapis.com. Using the Leaflet/OSM provider loads tiles from tile.openstreetmap.org and the Leaflet library from unpkg.com. Choose the provider that matches your site’s privacy posture. Parity & rewrite Version 1.0.0 is a complete rewrite of the 2015 codebase. The old plugin’s PHP and JavaScript were written against WordPress 3.6 and PHP 5, used the long-retired Google JSAPI loader, geocoded addresses on every page view, shipped 300+ marker PNGs of mixed provenance, and had several unauthenticated AJAX write paths in wp-admin. Re-issuing it as-is on a modern stack was not viable, so the codebase was rewritten from scratch around the same shortcode vocabulary. What you keep. Posts written against the very old [google-map-v3 ...] shortcode still render. The plugin registers google-map-v3 as a back-compatibility alias that maps the still-useful attributes (width, height, zoom, kml, maptype, addmarkermashup, addmarkerlist, maptypecontrol, zoomcontrol, streetviewcontrol, scrollwheel, draggable, showbike, showtraffic, tiltfourtyfive, styles) onto the new renderer. The Google provider is selected by default for these legacy shortcodes, the old addmarkerlist="addr{}icon{}desc|..." packed format is parsed transparently, and the most-used legacy icon filenames (1-default.png, museum_naval.png, hotel_0star.png, …) are aliased to the bundled modern SVG set. What’s gone for good. Some features can’t come back because the upstream services or APIs disappeared: panoramio — Google shut Panoramio down in November 2016. pancontrol — Google removed panControl from the Maps API in 2017; there is no flag to set anymore. google.maps.KmlLayer — deprecated April 2026; replaced internally with a fetch + KML→GeoJSON renderer. The old https://www.google.com/jsapi loader — retired by Google in 2017; the modern loader requires a user-supplied API key. What’s not yet back. Marker clustering, directions/routing, geolocation marker, and marker drop/bounce animations are reachable from the rewrite but not yet wired up. See PARITY.md on GitHub for the full, categorised list (restored / new / missing-but-doable / deprecated-by-upstream / deliberately-dropped) plus a migration cheat-sheet. What was dropped on purpose. The sidebar widget (Classic Widgets is in long-term legacy mode), the saved-shortcodes admin library (it was the largest single security surface in the old plugin), and the 300+ marker PNG library (replaced with 13 modern SVGs plus a legacy-filename alias map) — see PARITY.md for the rationale on each. Contributors Current maintainer Norbert Preining Original author of the upstream “Comprehensive Google Map Plugin” (2011–2014) Alexander Zagniotov — thanks for the original work, released under GPL. Additional contributors Honza Rameš