Event Map

The event map lets you upload a venue image or floor plan and pin your event's locations directly onto it, so volunteers can see at a glance where each shift takes place.

Where the map editor lives

Open an event and go to Locations. The page opens on the List tab, where you create and edit locations. Click the Map tab at the top of the page to open the map editor and upload an image or place pins. You need a location's name to exist before you can pin it; create locations first on the List tab if it's empty.

Uploading a map image

Drop or select a JPEG, PNG, or WebP file up to 5 MB. Once uploaded, the image becomes the canvas you place pins on.

Uploaded images are re-encoded on the server before they're stored — this strips all embedded camera metadata, including EXIF data and GPS location tags, so a photo taken on-site never leaks the photographer's exact coordinates or device information. The image itself is displayed exactly as uploaded (rotated correctly if the camera recorded an orientation), just without the hidden metadata.

You can replace the map image at any time from the same panel. Removing the map image clears every location's pin position — see What happens when you remove the map below.

Placing a pin

There are three ways to place a pin, so the editor works whether you're at a desk or walking the venue with a phone:

1. Drag from the sidebar (desktop). Locations without a pin yet are listed in the sidebar. Drag one onto the map and drop it where the location actually is. If the drag doesn't reach the map, the location is selected instead and a message asks you to tap the map to place it — nothing is lost, just finish with a tap.
2. Tap to place (phone or tablet). Tap a location in the "without a pin" list to arm it, then tap the spot on the map — no drag gesture required. This is the only practical option on a touchscreen. Once a location is selected, a highlighted bar appears above the map naming that location, and it stays until you tap the map or press Cancel in the bar.
3. Keyboard placement. Select a location in the "without a pin" list with the keyboard (Tab, then Enter) to arm it — focus moves to the map, which is now labeled and reachable with the keyboard. Press Enter again to drop the pin at the centre of the map. Focus then moves straight to the newly placed pin, so you can immediately nudge it with the arrow keys — 0.01 per press, or 0.1 if you hold Shift — or use the numeric X and Y position fields (each between 0 and 1, representing the fraction of the image's width/height) for exact values. This gives keyboard-only users a way to place a location's first pin and fine-tune it, not just adjust one that's already placed.

A very short or fast drag can be read by the browser as a click rather than a drag — in that case the location is selected, not placed, and the bar above the map tells you to finish with a tap. If you've ever dragged a location onto the map and it seemed to do nothing, this is why: the location is still selected, just tap the map to finish placing it.

A location with no pin placed no longer appears in the volunteer-facing map legend at all — placing a pin is what publishes a location to the map. This doesn't affect the location's own shift details, which still show its name and description regardless of pin status; see The external map link and "Get directions" below.

Finding a location in the sidebar

The search box above the two sidebar lists filters both of them by name as you type, ignoring capitalisation. It only changes what the sidebar shows — pins stay exactly where they are on the map, nothing is unplaced, and a location that is selected or waiting to be placed keeps that state even while its row is hidden, so clearing the box brings it back unchanged. If nothing matches, each list says so rather than going blank.

A location in the "Placed pins" list can also be clicked (or focused and activated with Enter or Space) to select its pin, which opens the same X/Y position fields you get from clicking the pin on the map — useful when the map is dense or you're on a phone where a small marker is hard to hit. Selecting from the list only selects: it doesn't move the pin, and it doesn't interfere with a location you've already picked for placement.

Each sidebar list scrolls inside itself once it grows past its visible height, instead of pushing the rest of the page down — the search box above stays in place while you scroll through a long roster of locations.

Repositioning and removing a pin

To move a placed pin, drag it to a new spot on the map, or select it — on the map or from the sidebar's "Placed pins" list — and edit the X/Y fields directly. A placed pin can also be focused with the keyboard (click it, or Tab to it) and nudged the same way arrow keys work right after placement: 0.01 per press, 0.1 with Shift held.

To remove a pin without deleting the location, select the pin and click Remove pin, then confirm. The location moves back to the "without a pin" list in the sidebar — its description, photo, and external map link all stay exactly as they were. Nothing about the location itself is deleted, only its position on this map.

A pin marker is centred on its position, so dragging one all the way to an edge places its centre on that edge and the outer half of the marker is cropped by the map — the X/Y values still read 0 or 1 as expected.

Giving a location an icon

A location can carry one optional icon, shown inside its pin on both the map editor and the map volunteers see. It's set on the location itself, on the List tab — open a location's create or edit dialog and use the icon field.

By default the icon is picked from a curated set of 20 icons, grouped by purpose (programme, food & drink, safety & info, facilities, and access & logistics) and searchable by name. Choosing one makes it appear inside that location's pin everywhere the pin is rendered. Choosing No icon returns the pin to a plain dot.

This curated set is the recommended default — a pin is small, so a venue map stays legible and visually consistent when everyone picks from the same handful of icons chosen specifically to still read clearly at that size.

If none of the 20 cover what you need — an anchor for a harbour stage, a fire extinguisher for a safety point — click Advanced: search all icons inside the same picker to search the full icon catalogue by name. Every result is previewed live, rendered at the exact size it will appear on the map, so you can judge legibility before picking: if an icon is hard to read in the preview, it will be hard to read on the map too. This is exactly why the curated set exists as the default — the advanced search is there for the cases it doesn't cover, not a replacement for it.

Reopening the picker always starts back on the curated list, so switching to advanced search is a deliberate, one-off choice each time, not a new default.

What happens when you remove the map

If you remove the event's map image entirely, every location's pin position is cleared at the same time (locations move back to the unpinned list). Descriptions, photos, and external map links are untouched. Uploading a new map image afterward starts with a blank canvas — you'll need to re-place pins on the new image.

Hiding a location from the map

Every location also has a Hide from the event map toggle, in the same edit dialog on the List tab. Turning it on removes the location from the volunteer-facing map legend and the map canvas entirely, for both public visitors and signed-in volunteers.

Two groups keep seeing a hidden location: organizers (anyone who can manage shifts for the event), and any volunteer who currently holds a shift at that location. Everyone else — including public visitors — sees no legend row and no pin for it, exactly as if the location didn't exist on the map.

The Locations page and the Map editor tab always show every location, hidden or not, pinned or not — so a hidden location stays fully editable and pinnable from the List and Map tabs, even though it has disappeared from the volunteer-facing views.

Hiding is a decluttering tool, not a security boundary: a shift assigned to a hidden location still shows that location's name in the shift plan and in shift details, because the shift itself isn't hidden — only the location's presence on the map is. Use this for staff-only, back-of-house, or not-yet-announced locations you want to keep off the public map without deleting them.

Adding a photo to a location

Open a location and use the photo field to attach one representative photo (JPEG, PNG, or WebP, up to 5 MB — same limits as the map image, and camera metadata is stripped the same way). Each location holds a single photo; uploading a new one replaces the old.

This photo is intentionally not shown on the public event page or in the map legend — it only appears when a volunteer opens the details of a shift at that location, alongside the location's description and directions link. Keep that in mind when choosing a photo: it's a "here's what to look for" reference for someone about to work that shift, not a marketing image for the event page.

The external map link and "Get directions"

Each location also has an optional map URL field (a plain https:// link, unrelated to the uploaded venue image). This is what produces the Get directions link volunteers see in shift details, and, for a pinned location, in the map legend too.

Use this field especially for offsite locations that aren't part of your venue plan — a satellite parking lot, an off-site warehouse, a partner location across town. An unpinned location no longer gets a row in the map legend, so its directions link won't appear there — but it still shows up in that location's own shift details regardless of pin status, so an offsite location's directions link reaches volunteers even without a map pin.