How difficult would this be to do? (Image map)

[aimeeandbeatles]

On my site I have a list of items, sorted geographically. It's getting kind of long and I was considering splitting it up. My friend suggested I make an image map of the world and you click on a country.

How hard would this be to do? Here's a couple things to take in mind:

1. The website is fixed-width. So it can't really be that wide. This might be an issue with some of the smaller countries. On the current page I have the countries sorted by regions. That might be easier. Right now, the largest "region" is the United States. (I do each state individually.)
2. Also, it needs to be easily "upgraded." Meaning I can add more links later on if needed. Of course if I do it by region I could just add them ahead of time.
3. One last idea that I had: What if the world maps let you click on regions, and then from there you could click on the countries individually?
4. Keep in mind this is WordPress.

What are your suggestions? Is it worth a shot? I'm not real good at coding or anything but once in a while I can wrap my brain around it.

I googled it and I dont really see any pre-made ones but if someone knows of one send it along.

 

[BandC]

This depends heavily on your web site layout, how much space you can dedicate to the image map, how many points or areas will be on the map, etc. If you don't have much space and/or you have a lot of points it will look bad. If that's the case, I would just go with a Javascript expanding text link list (continents -> countries maybe) instead of an image map.

Here's an implementation of a world image map: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssmaps/

Another option may be using Google Maps and markers. Either of these approaches will require some programming though.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That looks neat. If you want to see the width Ive got to work with there's a link in my signature. That map on the link I think is a little too small but I could probably find one that I can use.

 

[warpus]

If you have programming skills, check out raphael

related example

 

[Mise]

Have you tried putting pins onto Google Maps?

Tutorial here: http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Google-Map-With-Excel-Data-and-Fusion-Tables