How to Add Google Maps in WordPress

You can add all types of content into your WordPress site. At Digital Marketing Live we have shown you how to add audio files, videos, PDF and Spreadsheets in WordPress. Adding content from external sources allows you to create rich content that are useful and highly interactive. In this article, we will show you how to add Google Maps in WordPress.

Manually Adding a Google Map in WordPress

You can embed a Google Map into your WordPress.com blog using the following instructions.

1. Visit Google Maps.


2. Type in any street address or geographic location and click the Search button


3. Select Share and a popup will appear, as illustrated below.


4. Select the Embed tab as above and copy the code from the box. The code will begin with <iframe.


5. In your WordPress.com homepage, go to Posts → Add or Pages → Add (or open an existing post/page in editing mode). Open the HTML Editor and paste the code directly into your post or page.


6. Click Save Draft, Update, or Publish depending on the status of your post or page. If you refresh the page, you will notice that the code has changed. WordPress has converted the HTML code into the working shortcode.
   

Here is an example of what the embedded map will look like.


 

Adding Google Maps in WordPress Using a Plugin

The first method is good, if you only want to embed a Google map to just one location on your WordPress site. But if maps play an important role on your site’s main content and you need to frequently add maps in your posts, then we would recommend using a plugin.

There’s plenty of plugins for embedding Google Maps in your site. In this post, though, I’m going to focus on MapPress Easy Google Maps, a pretty neat plugin with more than 100,000 active installs. First thing you need to do is install and activate MapPress Easy Google Maps plugin.After installing the plugin, go the plugin’s settings screen and paste your Google Maps API Key in the field named (yes, you got it right 😜) Browser API key. If you don’t have one, get yours by following the steps described here.

 

[caption id="attachment_704" align="alignnone" width="973"]MapPress Settings Screen right after installation. Notice the warning letting us know that we need to add an API Key if we want to use the plugin.[/caption]

Then click on Save Changes, and go edit the page or post in which you want to add a map.

Now, scroll down until you find a new box named MapPress and click on New Map button to create a new map. This will open the following editor

[caption id="attachment_705" align="alignnone" width="672"]Creating and customizing maps is pretty straightforward with MapPress. Just name the map, fill the options, and you’re done![/caption]

where you can tweak the map. In particular, you’ll be able to name the map, choose its size, and enter the address it has to pin to (or click on My Location to let the plugin automatically detect where you are). Notice you can add as many markers as you want by locating multiple addresses, one after the other.

Once the map is ready, you simply need to click on Insert into post button and a new shortcode will appear.