Creating a job portal part2: using openlayers & location to make a geographic visualisation of all users

I dislike the gmap module because google maps can’t be designed to fit the layout of a site. That’s why i prefer open layers (cloudmade) in combination with the location module. A short intro to open layers:

“OpenLayers provides the code flexibility of open source, and the extensibility of being able to handle a huge amount of GIS data formats. OpenLayers also excels at providing an input for geospatial features.”

Location can be used to retrieve latitude and longitude informations and you can attach the location CCK fields to your new content profiles made in the first part. Intro on location:

“The Location module allows real-world geographic locations to be associated with Drupal nodes, including people, places, and other content. The Location module allows admins to collect addresses, geocode them (translate addresses to lattitude/longitude), and associate locations with Drupal nodes and users. Location data is automatically used to generate GeoRSS within your existing RSS feeds. Location also provides an API so that other modules may take advantage of its address storage and geocoding features.”

When installed and configured (check this sandbox for the openlayers configuration). You can import this openlayers_view i created.