Guides

Publishing and sharing

Publish your map so others can see it, share its link or embed it in your own site, and keep editing in private.

squidmaps is in beta. Features, the map spec and these docs may change without notice, and things may occasionally break. Export a copy of any map that matters to you, and tell us when something isn't right: use Beta feedback, or email [email protected].

On this page

Preview before you publish
Publish
Keep editing
Unpublish or delete a map
Your map’s link
Embed your map
What visitors see
Keeping it up to date

Preview before you publish

Choose Preview in the editor to see the map as visitors will, on a desktop or a phone.

Publish

Choose Publish. Your map goes live at its link, made from your username and the map’s name, like squidmaps.io/jane-doe/favorite-coffee-shops. Published maps are public: anyone with the link can see them, and they’re listed on your profile.

Tip: Private maps are coming. Until then, maps you haven’t published are only visible to you.

Keep editing

Edits you make after publishing stay in your draft. Visitors keep seeing the published map until you publish again, and Publish shows a dot while there are edits to publish. When visitors see the map as it is, the button becomes Share, with your map’s link and the code to embed it.

Unpublish or delete a map

To take a map down, click its Published status at the top of the editor’s left panel and choose Unpublish map, or choose Unpublish in the Share dialog. Its link and any embeds stop working, and it leaves your profile and people’s favorites. Your draft stays, and publishing again brings the map back at the same link.

To delete a map for good, unpublish it first, then click its Draft status and choose Delete map. Deleting removes the map, its features and its uploaded images, and can’t be undone, so the dialog offers to export a copy first.

Your map’s link

The link is also where you edit the map: when you open your own map’s link, you get the editor, and everyone else gets the published map. If you rename a map, its link changes to match, and the old link keeps working.

Embed your map

Put your map in your own website, blog or newsletter page, where visitors can pan, zoom and click it without leaving.

Publish your map. Only published maps can be embedded.
Choose Share (or stay in the dialog right after publishing), and under Embed it on a website, choose Copy code.
Paste the code into your page’s HTML, or into the HTML or embed block of your site builder.

The code is an iframe of your map’s link with /embed on the end:

html

<iframe
  src="https://squidmaps.io/jane-doe/favorite-coffee-shops/embed"
  title="Favorite coffee shops"
  width="100%"
  height="480"
  style="border:0"
  loading="lazy"
  allowfullscreen
></iframe>

While you have edits waiting to publish, the button reads Publish instead of Share: publish them first, or write the code yourself from your map’s link, as above.

Tip: The map fills the width of where you put it, 480 pixels tall. Change height for a taller or shorter map; on phones, 400 or less leaves room to scroll past it.

What visitors see

An embedded map is the published map with its title panel and legend, and a View on squidmaps link to its page. If you’ve turned on the feature list or search (see Map settings), they’re in the embed’s panel too. Links in it, like your name or a feature’s links, open in a new tab, so your page stays open. Views of the embed count toward your map’s views.

Keeping it up to date

The embed always shows what you last published. When you publish again, sites showing your map update within a minute, with nothing to change on your page. Edits you haven’t published don’t appear in it.