[Qgis-user] creating a point, free basemaps and going past 180 degrees

[M.E.Dodd]

Three questions from someone newish to qgis:

 1.  how do you put point data on a map in qgis.  This seems to be the simplest thing to do in most other gis systems but the most difficult in qgis or have I completely missed something.  E.g. I have a file of lat long coordinates or ordnance survey coordinates in an excel file and simply want to plot them out, how do I do that?  I have actually done it but only via another gis (then saving and replotting the resulting vector format file in qgis) or via a .kml file again generated elsewhere.
 2.  how to get hold of free basemap outline data e.g. countries of the world.  I have tried very many different sources and still not found a nice set of data that is relatively easy to use.
 3.  how to display and use maps that are not centred on the prime meridian and go past 180 degrees e.g. maps of Russia?

This is for a project to plot records of species in Russia i.e. plot the location of a sighting, seems straightforward enough but actually turns out to be very difficult.
Thanks
Mike


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