You'll want to look into using STYLE and SYMBOL definitions in your map file. Here's an example of a layer with red circles for points that are 3 pixels large. LAYER NAME "points" TYPE POINT STATUS DEFAULT DATA "points" CLASS STYLE SYMBOL 'circle' COLOR 255 0 0 SIZE 3 END END END SYMBOL NAME 'circle' TYPE ELLIPSE POINTS 1 1 END FILLED TRUE END