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General/Problems

Create personalized world maps and add placemarks which include information (description, images and videos). Share interesting places, create maps with useful gadgets or tell about great experiences – You can give your fancy full scope. You can also embed your maps into external websites.

Furthermore you can even easily embed external content.

If you like the website you can support GLOTTER by posting new (high quality) entries. You can also tell your friends about the website.

We’re always looking forward to new feature requests. If you have new proposals how we could improve our service, feel free to Contact us or give us Feedback.

Please report any bugs (also inform us about your browser/OS version and send us a detailed error description) under Contact. Thanks in advance for your help!

Old browsers are not supported any more and we strongly recommend switching to the latest version of your favorite browser for reasons of Security and User experience.

GLOTTER uses HTML5 technology and your browser needs to support JavaScript which can be activated in your browser settings/Internet-options.

Maybe we’re updating parts of the website right now. Please try to reload the page in a few minutes by pressing Ctrl+F5 (Windows) or cmd+R (Mac).

If you still experience problems, let us know.

Zooming is possible by using the navigation keys, by using the navigation, by double-clicking in the map or by using the Scroll wheel. On mobile devices you can use touch gestures.

Simply move the pointer while you press the mouse key (on screens), use your finger (on touch screens) or click on the navigation keys.

When you activate and approve “Geolocation” the locationbased data of your IP-address and possibly nearby wireless access points or data from the GPS receiver of your mobile device will be used to get an estimate of your location. Accuracy varies greatly from location to location. An important note: Your data will not be stored or transfered to others without your permission.

The purpose of this tool is better usability. You can detect your current position (for a new placemark) with a single click.

More info can be found under W3C Geolocation API.

There could be many reasons why it doesn’t work as expected.

First of all the W3C Geolocation API needs to be supported by your browser. This feature is a Web Standard and has been integrated by all major Software vendors into the current browser versions.

Furthermore it needs to be enabled in your browser or OS settings. Please refer to the respective Software Support pages for help.

Please note that the detection of your location needs to be permitted for every website on first start.

Spam is annoying and can contain erroneous content or even malicious links. In order to protect our visitors and content creators from negative impacts of spam we’ve implemented an automated detection system to warn users when accessing potentially bad content.

We are aware that the current solution is not perfect and that it will not filter all content or even include false-positives but we hope that it can help combat Social spam and improve the overall quality of our platform.

If you would like to provide feedback on this feature please get in touch.

Please send us a message with a short comment and the weblink via Contact. Or simply click on the Report-button which can be found below each map, to contact us.

Thanks for your interest in helping out to improve GLOTTER. If you would like to suggest a better translation click on the “Help translate” button in the footer, select the words or phrases on the page with your mouse and suggest your translation.

My Account

If you want to create a new map you have to sign up a User account. Information and Services on this website are publicly available.

Your Username may only contain alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, no space)!

Captchas protect us from bots, spam, and other forms of automated abuse. If you can’t solve a Captcha, you can generate a new one by clicking on the reload icon. Captcha verifications will only be shown when you signup a new account or when you need to reset your password.

1. Did you receive a Welcome Email with an Activation link? Did you confirm your profile by clicking on the link?

2. Please double-check if you try to sign in with the Email address you registered or enter your Username instead.

3. Your browser must accept cookies in order to sign in. Please activate cookies and try it again.

If you still have problems, Contact us.

Did you register with a correct Email address and have access to the mailbox? Maybe the Email got stuck in your Spam folder! Wait some minutes and check your Emails again!

You can also try to reset your password.

No problem! Open the “Password forgotten” webform, enter your Email address and follow the instructions.

Your new Email address needs to be confirmed before it gets activated. Just click on the activation link you should have received via Email.

If you didn’t receive the Activation Email, check the new Email address in your profile again.

It’s a pity that you want to leave GLOTTER. We need to point out that all your data (userdata, entries, comments, etc.) will be deleted permanently. If you still want to cancel your membership you have to sign in to “Edit your User profile”, scroll down and confirm the “Delete” procedure.

Please inform us why you decided to delete your account so that we can improve our service under Feedback.

My Entries

You can create personal maps by selecting “Private” when creating your entry. Private entries only can be accessed by the original creator and will not be shown in the Search or on User profiles. Please note that for Caching reasons all placemarks are stored in an XML file which can be accessed publicly if the link is known. This is required to deliver cached markers and to comply with the Google Maps terms of use.

As long as it’s apparent that the map was created using GLOTTER (e.g. backlink to the original entry) you can embed maps in external websites. Just click on the link “Embed in website” which can be found on every public entry and paste the HTML-code into your website-content. Of course you can also customize the size of the map according to your needs.

“Private” entries can’t be embedded in external websites.

All your maps are listed in your personal User profile. Private entries are hidden unless you are signed in.

By default the map gets adjusted to the bounds of the placemarks. To manually set the viewstate you have to add two parameters – coordinates (latlng) and zoomlevel (zoom) – to the URL.

e.g. Zoom in to “Washington D.C” in the entry “World cities and flags”: http://www.glotter.com/entry-1?latlng=38.89,-77.03&zoom=11

To manually adjust the imagery you have to add the parameter “maptype” to the URL and set the viewmode (Roadmap, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain).

Bsp. Satellite view: http://www.glotter.com/entry-1?maptype=satellite

Your own entries or entries that have been published with a “Creative Commons” licence can be copied and adapted. Follow these steps to create a copy of an entry:

1. Sign in
2. Open the entry
3. Click on the button “Duplicate Entry”

All placemarks in Google Maps are cached to increase load times. Wait a few minutes and refresh the browser window.

You can always preview your changes by clicking on the Button “Reload”.

We use an external library to convert geospatial data from Geo feeds. This is experimental and only specific formats (KML, GeoRSS, GPX) are supported. Furthermore not all dynamic features (like KML network links) may work.

Please make sure that the feed is valid and accessible. The file extension needs to match the file format.

The following Geo feeds have been tested:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/phayes/geoPHP/master/tests/input/point.kml (KML)

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/phayes/geoPHP/master/tests/input/point.georss (GeoRSS)

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/phayes/geoPHP/master/tests/input/route.gpx (GPX)

Create a Map

Use tags by adding keywords to the according input field when creating your entry. The purpose of “Tags” is to describe your entry in some words – relevant tags combine similar entries and can display them in a Tagcloud.

Tags that describe a world travel (separated by space or comma):

worldtravel summer 2007 photos

oEmbed allows you to embed content that is provided by external websites. You only need to include a link to the resource in the entry description field. The embedded content will be generated automatically.

Supported oEmbed providers are YouTube (Videos), Vimeo (Videos), Facebook (Posts, Media), Instagram (Images), Flickr (Images), Twitter (Tweets, Profiles), Spotify (Music), etc.

It’s really easy. Give it a try:

https://www.facebook.com/NASA/posts/10156940823806772

https://www.instagram.com/p/Brx04JWHqfS

Sign in to your personal User profile, search for the entry and open the entry. Below the map you should see a webform and buttons to perform the required actions.

Open the entry and click on the Edit button. Or sign in to your personal User profile, search for the entry and open the entry. If you want to edit an existing placemark you need to select the small button with the Hand icon in the top-left corner of your map. Afterwards you can select a placemark on the map and apply your changes.

You can add a maximum of 250 placemarks per entry.

The Bulk Importer let’s you easily import up to 50 placemarks per Upload process via an “Excel” like table.

1. Create a new entry (or open an existing one in Edit-Mode)
2. Click on the button “Import”
3. Fill out the table with the relevant data. Alternatively you can download a Spreadsheet template, enter your data and copy the table from this sheet afterwards.

Required data need to be specified. Incorrect data will be ignored during the Upload process. Please be careful and check your data beforehand and be aware that all in all max. 250 placemarks can be added to a map.

There are free tools which let you Batch Geocode multiple addresses.

By default the following Icon 📌 is used. If you want to specify a different Icon, you need to enter the Emoji icon in the column “Icon”.

If you activate “Logbook”, all information from your placemarks (title, date, coordinates, description, etc.) are listed below your map.

You can keep a Travel diary or create a Geo Blog and download the calendar data in the iCAL file format which can be imported into your calendar application (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Facebook, etc.). The date and the exact local time can be set for each placemark individually.

Furthermore you can take a tour (“Auto-Playback”) of your placemarks in Google Earth mode.

By default the timezone of the Web Server is used. But if you change the date or the time of a placemark manually the correct timezone will be calculated for this location.

After downloading the *.ICS (iCAL) file in your Logbook the time will be adjusted automatically in your Calendar application. This may help you coordinate worldwide appointments.

1. Open the panel “More options” in the Edit mode
2. Choose a line color
3. “First come – first served principle” … A polyline is generated between two placemarks depending on their individuell timestamps. The timestamp (date and time) of any placemark can be edited manually in the Marker Edit mode (e.g. 2000-12-31 12:00:00).

If the creator has applied the CC-BY Creative Commons – Attribution license (reuse allowed) to an entry, other users are free to create a copy and adapt it to their needs!