|Documentation

Introduction

What is LizPack?

A portal published with LizPack: the map, search, locating and feature attributes, in a plain browser.

LizPack runs, on your behalf, map portals built on Lizmap and QGIS Server. You prepare your projects in QGIS and upload them; we look after the servers, the rendering engines, the databases, the certificates and the monitoring.

In practice, you deploy an instance from your client area. A few minutes later you have an address of your own, over https, with its file space and its PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. There is no machine to rent, no system to update, no certificate to renew.

What this documentation covers

  • The screens of the client area, one by one: what they show, what you can do there, what happens next.
  • How our instances and databases work: what they contain, their limits, what happens when you exceed them.
  • What we take care of, and what remains yours to do.
It does not restate the documentation of the software we host. Preparing a project, symbology, expressions and publishing settings are described by the official documentation of QGIS and Lizmap, which is authoritative.

What an instance contains

An instance is not plain file hosting: it is a set of services working together, installed and monitored by us. Knowing them helps you tell where a problem sits.

ServiceWhat it does
The portal (Lizmap Web Client)The page your visitors open: list of maps, legends, search, tools.
The rendering engine (QGIS Server)It reads your projects and draws the requested maps on the fly.
The PostgreSQL/PostGIS databaseIt stores and queries your layers, and receives the edits made from the maps.
The file spaceIt keeps your projects, your data and your images. This is where you upload.
The Redis cacheIt keeps what has just been computed, so the next display is faster.

These services belong to your instance alone: another instance shares neither your files, nor your database, nor your cache. The instance page shows the state of each one, and Files opens its file space.

A slow map almost always comes from the rendering engine, and therefore from the project and its data. An unreachable portal comes from the infrastructure, and therefore from us: write to support.

From project to map online

Here is the whole journey, to place the chapters that follow.

  1. You prepare your project on your own computer, in QGIS, with its Lizmap configuration.
  2. You deploy an instance from Instances, or reuse an existing one. See Deploying an instance.
  3. You upload the project and its data, through Files on the instance page or from QGIS with the LizPack Publisher plugin.
  4. The project appears on the home page of your portal. See Uploading a project.
  5. In the Lizmap administration of your portal, you decide what is public and what requires an account. See Administering your instance.
  6. To update a map, you upload the project again: the online map follows.

How long it takes

  • Deploying an instance takes about four minutes, and an email tells you when it is done.
  • An uploaded project is served as soon as its files are in place.
  • A version upgrade is started from the instance page and takes about two minutes.

Large datasets need more care than the rest: a layer held in the instance database displays faster than a big uploaded file. See Your instance's database.