The map on the home page of Drupal.org is one of the most-noticed new features. It started with the prototype, which was just that— a Flash-based idea for what might go there. During implementation, we had to figure out what exactly it would be and how it would work.
First, we needed to know where people were. Drupal.org has the advantage of an audience who is more-likely to be using modern browsers, and we don’t need everyone’s location. I decided we should use the new Geolocation API, but didn’t find any existing modules. I wrote a small HTML5 user geolocation module to add a share location option to your profile page. For privacy, it is opt-in and rounded to the nearest 0.1 longitude/latitude. Over 5,000 have shared their location, less than 1% of active Drupal.org users, but still looks impressive on a map:
