Basically I need someone to create something I can install as a widget in the sidebar of a WordPress website. People will type in their city in a search box, then hit submit, and as a result, a new page will appear with a custom, downloadable, able to share/email, image. It will have text at the top of the image explaining, "I am x miles from x destination" Our company logo will be in the bottom left corner, with a collage of images around the one large image.
_____________________________________
l You are x Miles From l
l (Our business location) l
l l
l Pictures Pictures l
l l
l Pictures l
l Pictures l
l (Logo) l
_________________Pictures_____________
Everything else in the image will remain static, except the "x", which will change to how far away from our business location is, which will always be the same.
I want people to be able to embed the image into their website with HTML code, share it on social media, email it, or download it.
If anyone knows a WordPress plugin that will help do what I want to do, I will pay you for that information as well.
I look forward to your ideas.
Hello,
I understand what you are trying to do and I think I have a good viable solution:
I could build this little "app" using HTML5, the standard markup language of the web. This way, you could get a generic wordpress sidebar widget that can display HTML. The HTML5 code can utilize the google maps API provided for free by google to find your location, the users location, and calculate the distance. It then could generate a share able image as requested.
Let me know if you have any questions!
-Kurt Waldowski
Hi!
this is an interesting idea and I'd like to implement it for you.
I have prior experience with developing wordpress and php and to give you an idea of how I'd go about creating the widget, here are some of my thoughts:
1. calculate the distance:
The obvious answer would be to use the google maps api. The problem is that google requires one to actually display a google map when using its api (which might be a nice addition?).
A second solution would be to get a database of cities in your area/state or the US and their lat/long position and use it to calculate the distance.
2. create the static parts of the image:
I'm no graphics expert, but if you can show me the pictures I can tell you if I can create a good-looking image from them.
3. add "You are X Miles from" dynamically to picture:
if the gd library (php5-gd) is installed, this can easily be done with php.
4. wrap functionality in wordpress plugin:
adding the search box and image-generating functionality to wordpress as a widget is easy, as is the creation of html code and sending of emails.
I have no experience with how to share images on social media via wordpress, but there are plenty of pre-existing plugins for this, so I would use one of those.
If your interested, I'm Looking forward to hearing from you,
Tim