Smart Map Links

Smart Map Links is a lightweight WordPress plugin that turns any street address into a smart, clickable map link — no coding required. Just drop a shortcode onto any page or post, and Smart Map Links handles the rest.

When a visitor clicks the link, the plugin automatically detects their device and opens the address in the most appropriate map application. iPhone and iPad users are sent directly to Apple Maps. Android users are routed to their default map app via a native geo link — whether that’s Google Maps, Waze, or any other navigation app they’ve set as their default. Desktop visitors are taken to Google Maps in a new tab. No settings, no guesswork — it just works.

How It Works

Place the shortcode anywhere on your site with a full address and optional link label:

[smart_map address="Dallas Love Field, 8008 Herb Kelleher Way, Dallas, TX 75235"]

[smart_map address="Country Music Hall of Fame, 222 Rep. John Lewis Way S, Nashville, TN 37203" title="Map it!"]

Need a plain text link instead of a button? Use the companion shortcode, which always renders as a text link regardless of your global style setting — making it easy to mix buttons and text links on the same page:

[smart_map_link address="Dallas Love Field, 8008 Herb Kelleher Way, Dallas, TX 75235"]

[smart_map_link address="Country Music Hall of Fame, 222 Rep. John Lewis Way S, Nashville, TN 37203" title="Map it!"]

Both shortcodes support a title attribute to customize the link label, and also accepts an align attribute to override the desktop alignment on a per-instance basis without changing your global settings.

Display Options

Smart Map Links gives you full control over how your links and buttons look, all from a simple settings page — no CSS knowledge required.

  • Link Type — Choose between a text link or a styled button.
  • Link Style — Use the WordPress default style or switch to Custom to define your own look.
  • Button Alignment — Set independent alignment for desktop and mobile, including Left, Center, Right, and Full Width. Mobile alignment is applied automatically on screens up to 1024px wide, covering all iPhones and iPads in both portrait and landscape orientation.
  • Button Styling — Customize background color, hover color, font color, font hover color, font size, font weight, font style, text decoration, border size, border color, border radius, padding, and button width.
  • Button Icon — Optionally add an icon image from your Media Library that appears to the left of the button label. A live preview is shown immediately after selecting the icon, with a Remove button to clear it.
  • Text Link Styling — Customize font size, color, hover color, font weight, font style, and text decoration.
  • All color fields use the built-in WordPress color picker for a polished, consistent experience.

Menu Map Link

Smart Map Links can automatically inject a map link directly into any registered WordPress navigation menu — no custom link setup required.

Enable the Menu Map Link option in the settings page, then configure the following:

  • Link Type — Choose whether the menu item follows your global Link Type setting, or override it independently to display a button or text link regardless of what shortcodes on the page use. This means you can have a custom button on a page and a plain text link in the menu at the same time, with no conflict.
  • Menu — Select which registered navigation menu receives the link.
  • Address — The full street address the link will open in the map app.
  • Link Label — The text displayed for the menu item. Defaults to “Get Directions”.
  • Position — Optionally specify where in the menu the link appears (1 = first item, 2 = second, etc.). Leave blank to append at the end.

When set to Button, the menu item renders with all your custom button styling applied — colors, padding, border, icon, and all. When set to Text Link, it renders using your custom text link styles.

Performance

Smart Map Links is built to stay out of the way. It loads no external scripts or stylesheets on the frontend. All per-page CSS is collected and output as a single style block in the footer rather than inline on each shortcode instance. Plugin settings are served from a two-layer cache — a request-level object cache and WordPress’s persistent object cache (Redis or Memcached, if available) — so the database is read at most once per page load. Admin JavaScript is loaded only on the plugin’s own settings page.

Clean Uninstall

If you ever deactivate and delete Smart Map Links, the plugin’s settings are automatically removed from the database. Nothing is left behind.

Requirements

  • WordPress 5.0 or higher
  • PHP 8.0 or higher
  • No external dependencies — everything runs on what WordPress already provides

Smart Map Links Examples:

Button

Get Directions

Text Link
Get Directions

Custom Label (title)

Open Map

Version: 1.8 |  Author: René Michaels  |  License: GPL2+