QGIS2WebMap by NIKA Powered by QGIS

Troubleshooting

Every entry here is a real reported failure, with what causes it and what to do. If yours is not listed, the QGIS Log Messages panel usually says why: open View → Panels → Log Messages and read the QGIS2WebMap tab.

Installing

Searching the plugin list finds nothing

  1. Make sure All is selected on the left of the Manage and Install Plugins window, not Installed.

    The plugin manager with All selected and QGIS2WebMap found in the search results.

  2. Check the spelling. It is one word: QGIS2WebMap. Searching OnlyMap also finds it.
  3. If the whole list is empty, QGIS cannot reach the plugin repository — often a workplace firewall. Check Settings → Options → Network for a proxy, then see installing from a file.

It installed, but there is no Web menu entry

  1. Plugins → Manage and Install Plugins → Installed — confirm QGIS2WebMap by NIKA is there and its box is ticked.

  2. If it is there but unticked, tick it. The menu entry and toolbar button appear straight away.

    The plugin manager's Installed tab, with the QGIS2WebMap row and its ticked checkbox highlighted.

  3. If it is ticked and still missing, open View → Panels → Log Messages and read the QGIS2WebMap tab for an error.

It installs but errors on an older QGIS

The plugin requires QGIS 3.44 or newer. Earlier versions are not supported — not as a policy but as a measured fact: they fail. QGIS 4 is supported.

Check with Help → About.

QGIS closed while I was using it

That is a bug, not a normal outcome. The plugin never closes QGIS, and the only thing it ever installs is the OnlyMap runtime, once, after asking. Please report it with the tail of the Log Messages panel.

The runtime download

It asks to download something. Is that expected?

Yes, once per computer. The OnlyMap runtime is the code that draws the map in a browser, and it is built into every map you export — which is exactly what lets someone open your map with nothing installed. It is a separate commercial product with its own licence, which is why it is fetched rather than bundled into this GPL plugin, and why you are shown the licence first.

About 4.5 MB. After that, everything works offline, and exporting itself never touches the network. See privacy for what that request does and does not send.

The download fails

The download uses QGIS’s own network settings, so check Settings → Options → Network first — a proxy configured there is used automatically.

If outside downloads are blocked entirely, install the runtime by hand:

  1. On a machine with access, download the package from npm and unpack it.
  2. Copy the dist folder — you need onlymap.standalone.js and onlymapjs.css.
  3. On the offline machine, set the environment variable ONLYMAP_RUNTIME_DIR to that folder before starting QGIS.

The plugin uses a runtime it finds that way and never asks to download.

The Processing algorithm stops immediately on a new machine

Expected, and it says so. Export to OnlyMap web map cannot show you a licence — there is nobody to show it to during a batch run — so on a computer that has never installed the runtime it refuses rather than downloading silently.

Export once from Web → QGIS2WebMap by NIKA and the algorithm works from then on.

Exporting

Export is greyed out

The reason is printed beside the button. The three you will meet:

The reason says What to do
Add a vector layer to the project to export. The project has no vector layer. Raster-only projects have nothing to export
Tick at least one layer to include. Everything is unticked in the Include column on the Layers tab
Something else Open the Fidelity tab. A Blocked item names the layer and the reason

The Fidelity tab takes a long time to fill

It reads every feature of every layer, so a large project takes a while. The progress bar names the layer it is on. It runs on a background thread — the window stays usable, and Cancel stops it.

Nothing happens when I press Export twice

By design. One job runs at a time, and both buttons go dark while it runs, so a second press cannot start a second export.

The exported file is enormous

Standalone HTML writes every feature into the file itself. That is what makes it self-contained, and it is inherent to the format — a map with 20 MB of data produces a file of at least 20 MB.

In order of how much they save:

  1. Untick Popups on layers whose attributes nobody needs. Those values leave the file entirely.
  2. Untick Include on layers that are not carrying their weight.
  3. On the Map tab, tick Export only the features in this view to drop everything outside your current extent.
  4. Set Coordinate precision to 6 decimal places. This is irreversible; six places is about 0.1 m at the equator.
  5. Switch to Share ZIP, which compresses the same map.

Opening and sharing

The map is blank, or shows a message about JavaScript

You are looking at it somewhere that does not run JavaScript — an email client’s preview pane, a file manager’s preview, a chat app’s inline viewer. The message is deliberate; a blank window would be worse. Save the file and open it in a browser.

Double-clicking the Folder export does not work

Correct, and it cannot. Browsers refuse to load the runtime from a separate file on a file:// page. The Folder mode exists for uploading to a web server.

Use Standalone HTML for anything that has to open off a disk.

The map never arrived / the attachment was stripped

Many mail providers and corporate filters quarantine or remove .html attachments, because HTML is a common phishing vector. This is the single most common delivery failure.

Export as Share ZIP instead. A zip usually passes filters a bare .html does not, and it carries a short README telling the recipient how to open it.

The recipient says features are missing

Check the Fidelity tab against that layer. The usual causes:

Hosted maps

None of this applies to a file someone double-clicks, emails, or opens from localhost. Those draw everything, with no licence key.

Layers past the fifth do not render, or a layer is truncated

The OnlyMap free plan allows 5 layers per map and 25,000 features per layer, and those limits apply only to a page served over http(s) from a real domain. A layer past 25,000 features is truncated to its first 25,000 while still looking complete, which is why the Fidelity tab names every layer over a limit before you host.

An OnlyMap licence key lifts the limits and removes the on-map badge. Supply it through the ONLYMAP_LICENSE_KEY environment variable or the Processing algorithm’s licence parameter. Lifted limits are a technical convenience and not a licence grant — commercial use needs a key either way. See size limits on the free plan.

The map is blank on my own site but fine locally

Your site’s Content Security Policy. The map’s styling is driven by expressions the runtime evaluates at draw time, so a policy without 'unsafe-eval' in script-src stops it rendering — not partly, entirely. See hosting.

Basemap tiles do not load for the recipient

The tiles come from the provider’s servers on every open, so the recipient needs internet access and an unblocked route to that provider. If you need a map that works with no connection at all, set Basemap to None — the default.

Still stuck