[Qgis-us-user] Is QGIS right for me?

[Jessica Kane]

Hi Ian,

To get your map online, I've used the qgis2web plugin
<https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/qgis2web/> before to generate Leaflet map
files that you can host. I do find that for the best online map, I like to
tweak the html/css/js files that are generated by the plugin. But you could
get a simple map up without much tweaking.

GIS Cloud also has a plugin for QGIS
<https://www.giscloud.com/apps/gis-cloud-publisher-for-qgis/>, so you could
push your QGIS map into GIS Cloud and share it that way. That does require
a GIS Cloud subscription to edit and share your online map.

I'm sure there are other options as well that other folks on this list
might expand on.

Good luck!

- Jessica

Jessica Kane
Project Manager & Developer
*Line 45 LLC*
p: (833)254-6345 x701  m: (715)897-3409
a: P.O. Box 153, Gaylord, MI 49734
w: www.line-45.com  e: jkane at line-45.com




On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 12:00 PM Michele M Tobias <mmtobias at ucdavis.edu>
wrote:

> Hi Ian,
>
> I think QGIS will work very well for what you want to do.
>
>
>
> Yes, you can import Excel files into QGIS. It’s more common for people to
> import tabular data as .csv files, but QGIS can read Excel too. If the data
> you’re downloading comes in .csv format, I’d recommend that you download
> that format instead (Excel can mangle data when it makes assumptions…
> particularly if it thinks anything is a date), but either format will work.
> Since your tabular data doesn’t have spatial information, you’ll need to
> join it to a vector file of the states. For this, I would recommend Natural
> Earth https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ This dataset is designed for
> cartography and should have the country identifiers you need to complete
> your join.  A Google search should turn up blog posts on how to import your
> tabular data and how to do the join.  My intro workshop is here:
> https://ucdavisdatalab.github.io/Intro-to-Desktop-GIS-with-QGIS/ It
> doesn’t cover joining data, but it does have some other skills you might
> need. And this is my cartography for academic figures workshop:
> https://github.com/MicheleTobias/Workshop-Cartography-Journal-Figures
>
>
>
> There are ways to move directly from QGIS to an online interactive
> website. I’ll leave the specifics to the folks on the list who know more
> about this. (I build my own with Leaflet.)
>
>
>
> I hope you give QGIS a try. I use it for my cartography work so I think
> you’ll find it to be more than sufficient.
>
>
>
> Michele
>
>
>
> *Michele Tobias, PhD*
>
> Geospatial Data Specialist
>
> DataLab: Data Science & Informatics
>
> UC Davis Library
>
>
>
> 370 Shields Library
>
> (530)752-7532
>
> mmtobias at ucdavis.edu
>
> ORCID: 0000-0002-2954-8710 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2954-8710>
>
>
>
> Pronouns: she, her, hers
>
>
>
> *From:* Qgis-us-user <qgis-us-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> *On Behalf Of
> *Ian Feinhandler
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 20, 2023 8:05 AM
> *To:* qgis-us-user at lists.osgeo.org
> *Subject:* [Qgis-us-user] Is QGIS right for me?
>
>
>
> Hello, and thank you in advance for any replies.
>
>
>
> *Background:* I am a college professor looking for software to do some
> basic map-making - primarily for use in the classroom, but also for my own
> research. My college has moved to using free, open-access textbooks, and
> the maps are often out of date, and of poor quality compared to those found
> in expensive textbooks. I want to produce maps that contain current data,
> and that are easy for students to interpret. I took GIS classes in graduate
> school, but that was 20 years ago. I do not have a huge amount of time to
> learn new software.
>
>
>
> *Intended Use:* I want to take open-access data from sources like the
> U.N. Human Development Report, the World Bank, etc. and map the data by
> country, or by geographic units within a country (state, county, etc.). The
> open-access data is typically available in Microsoft Excel, which is the
> format I prefer to download, as I am quite comfortable doing basic
> data-analysis in Excel, and producing tables and graphs in Excel for
> displaying the data.
>
>
>
> *Key Question:* Can I upload an Excel file to QGIS?
>
>
>
> *Very Simple Example:* I have an Excel file with country names in column
> 1, and their GDP in column 2, and their rank in column 3. I want to make a
> map of the world that presents each country by GDP, using five different
> shades of a color (e.g. the darker the color, the higher the GDP). I assume
> that there are shapefiles that list countries with a "country code" (e.g.
> Afghanistan = 1, Albania = 2, or something like that). If I had a fourth
> column in my Excel file that was "country code" would I be able to upload
> the Excel file to QGIS and quickly produce a simple map?
>
>
>
> *Online Compatible?* It would be pretty cool if I could post the maps
> online, and have them be interactive, so that a student could click on a
> country and see the specific data (e.g. GDP, as mentioned above). This
> would be a nice feature, but not a necessary one.
>
>
>
> Thank you very much for taking the time to read through this long post,
> and for any advice.
>
>
>
> Ian
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