How to create a collaborative custom map (for our sales points)

Post date: 2023-02-04 06:55:47

For my work, I keep a map of our current resellers all over the world, and this (google) map is published on our website. This way, potential retail customers can easily find a reseller near them. Currently, I manually add new resellers to the map when they place their first order. This is .... time-consuming. How do i let resellers add themselves to the map instead?

The map is currently on google maps, which works fine.
I need a way to let all my resellers add themselves to the map and/or modify their own listing down the road.
What i don't want, is to have to manually invite each store to the map (most are businesses that use their professional emails. While they might have a google account, they don't usually email me from a gmail address.)
I also don't want each user to be able to modify someone else's listing. Either by accident/technical shortcoming, or by malice (deleting the competing stores in their area for example).

Ideally, each store could make their modifications, and I would get to approve them or not.
I know i can invite people to my map (adding their google account, then giving them the correct permission), but i don't think it's possible to restrict their input further after that?

Or if you have a better idea altogether to tackle this, that would be great.
I've also thought of some kind of script, that I could run to add their address automatically when they first purchase. However, this is not so practical, because some of these resellers are online only (so they can't be added to the map to begin with) and some have multiple retail locations, which i can't see from their orders.

I'm open to all kinds of creative ideas. For the details, the map is then hosted on our WordPress website. It would be great to also have a list of the addresses per country as well, but that's not essential.

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