TOPIC: Pre-sales questions for hotspots

Hi there,

I'm looking for a joomla mapping extension in order to geolocate K2 articles and I found hotspots which looks quite interesting.

However I have some questions that I hope you can answer:

- 1) I'd like to know how your software integrates with K2. Do I need to create K2 extra fields to keep the geolocation info for each K2 article? Does the K2 plugin create those extra fields? How many and what for? (I.e: address? Coordinates?). If the address is stored in a single extra field, is there a specific formatting requirement for the address? Or do I need separate extra fields for country, city, street, number, etc ?
- 2) Once I know how to store the geolation info in the K2 article I will require to do a bulk upload of K2 articles directly into the MySQL database. Does this represent a problem in integrating K2 and your software?
-3) There will also be front end submission of K2 articles. How does your software requests the geolocation info? Can I modify the layout by doing a K2 template override for itemform.php (K2 file)?
-4) The info that gets pulled from K2 and that is showed for each location, cab I use info from the K2 extra fields? I'm interested in showing from the K2 item, the title, intro text, the picture and some extra fields for each location. Is this possible? Both in the side bar and in the info that pops up when you click the location marker? Is it possible to do template override to modify the layout for how the info is presented for the locations in the sidebar?
-5) is your extension responsive?

Many thanks!

Hey Daniel,
1. When you enable our k2- hotspots plugin under your k2 articles both in backend and frontend you'll get a map + street, city, zip & country fields. (and lat /lng) You then enter this information and we actually create an entry in the hotspots table. We connect the hotspot to the k2 item through a mapping table. So the next time you do a change to this article the hotspots item will be automatically updated.

2. Well, we only create an entry in hotsptos when you have a k2 item. If you import through the db, no save event is triggered so no entry will be created in the Hotspots table.
3. Look at point 1.
4. We only show intro & description. You can make the readmore button from the map to open the k2 item. Additinaly our plugin also creates a map below the article.
5. Check our demo page

Regards,
Daniel

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry got sidetracked with something else but I'm fully on top of this now.

Coming back to my questions, just for clarity:

Bulk uploads) So I would have to populate two tables in the database for bulk uploads, the K2 article table and the hotspots table. What about the mapping table you mention? Is that a different table to the hotspots table? Would that mean I need to populate 3 tables for bulk uploads?

Template overrides) Sorry not clear about template overrides. Does hotspots support MVC architecture and standard Joomla templates overrides? What templates (hotspots php files) can I customize in the html folder of my Joomla template?

Extra fields) Regarding K2 extra fields and hotspots custom fields, is it possible to modify the code in your K2 - Hotspots plugging so every time a K2 article is saved I import the values on certain K2 extra fields of the K2 item into particular custom fields of the hotspot item so I can later show this info in hotspots by showing these custom fields?

Many thanks!

Hey Daniel,
You'll have to populate the mapping table as well -> this way hotspots will be aware of the relation between the k2 item and the hotspot item. So when you update the K2 item, the change will be reflected in hotspots as well.

About the template overrides -> yes we support template overrides (just check the core version and you'll see how the views are build). Just a note - we generate handlebars templates handlebarsjs.com/ that we use in our javascript.

extra fields -> it certainly is possible. Everything is possible with php

Regards,
Daniel