We built an open-source map of Wales with 1,960 hand-picked locations you can embed on your website or blog for free

Hi everyone,

I'm Nick, the founder of Wales.org.

I wanted to share something I've been working on for quite a while now that I think (hope) you will find useful.

It's an open-source interactive map of Wales with over 1,960 hand-picked locations across 18 filterable categories — castles, beaches, hiking trails, hidden pubs, dog-friendly walks, food and drink and I've built it to be embedded on travel sites without it competing with their businesses.

The bit that took the most thought was how to make it partner-safe?

The version on wales.org has affiliate links in pin popups (Viator for experiences, HolidayCottages.co.uk for stays). That's how we monetise.

But the moment the map embedded I realised that a holiday cottage operator in Pembrokeshire embedding our map on their site would be putting competitor affiliate links on their own listing pages. Same for any experience-day provider vs. the Viator buttons. Nobody with sense would embed that!

So the embed automatically detects context:

On wales.org the full version have the affiliate links visible (we earn commission)

In an iframe on a partner site the affiliate buttons are hidden, only the "Designed by Wales.org" URL at the bottom remains = partner-safe behaviour.

Detection is via `window.self !== window.top` plus a URL-path check. No configuration needed from anyone embedding it. There's also a CSS fallback to hide affiliate buttons even if the JavaScript ever fails — belt-and-braces partner safety!

The result?

For example, a Welsh cottage operator can now embed our map on their listings page and it won't redirect their customers to any of our affiliates. A tour provider can embed it on their experiences page and it won't push visitors to Viator. The designed by Wales.org link stays because that's the legitimate quid pro quo of free use and they give the host site valuable contextual content for visitors.

Build details (for the curious):

- Leaflet + Leaflet.markercluster, vanilla JS, no framework, no build step
- 1,963 pins held as static JS — no API calls on page load
- Three data layers: 170 handcrafted, 664 Google Places verified venues, 1,129 additional Google-verified pins
- Standalone HTML at `wales.org/embed/` that bypasses WordPress entirely — so the embed isn't affected by CMS updates, plugin conflicts or theme changes
- Open-source under MIT — fork it for your region
- Mobile-first popup and filter UI, fully keyboard-navigable

What I'd love from this community:

1. Try the embed.

If you run a travel site, blog or DMO and want to give your readers a richer "places to visit" tool than Google My Maps, grab the iframe from `wales.org/embed/`. Click pins on your test page and verify for yourself that the affiliate buttons stay hidden. Free with attribution.

2. Fork it for your region.

The architecture is location-agnostic — swap the pin data, re-centre the map, and you've got an interactive map of Cornwall, the Highlands, the Lake District, Provence, Tuscany or wherever you may be. If you do this, drop me a line — I'd love to see regional forks happen!

3. Tell me what's missing.

If you've worked on travel maps before and there's an obvious feature gap, a cleaner way to do something or a tourism use case the partner-safe behaviour should cover that it doesn't yet.

👉 Live demo: wales.org/interactive-map-wales/

🗺️ Free embed: wales.org/embed/

👾 Code: github.com/walesorg/wales-interactive-map

Happy to answer questions on the build, the partner-safe detection logic, the pin data sourcing, the WordPress integration, or anything else.

Cheers,
Nick