Today, we’re open sourcing a project that makes it easier for non-programmers to serve maps. Instead of configuring a JSON file to use TileStache, EasyTileServer lets you do the configuration for TileStache using a simple web form.
We built this because we needed a way to upload maps (MBTiles and Mapnik config files) to a server, for use in our apps, without doing anything technical. You can check out the EasyTileServer code from GitHub, and view our live example.
The result is a server that shows web pages where you can browse the maps you make (using Leaflet), as well as metadata about your available map sources served as JSON, so you can then use the maps in apps you create.
Along with the open source map styles we released yesterday, EasyTileServer lets just about anyone serve maps, without writing any code at all.
Thanks to MapBox, Leaflet, Mapnik, Django-REST, and TileStache for the tools we needed to build this, and our colleague Jesse Crocker, who wrote EasyTileServer.
Making your own maps is as simple as 1, 2, 3:
- Make an MBTiles or MapNik config file with TileMill.
- Run EasyTileServer (we run it on Amazon).
- Upload your map to EasyTileServer.
