Using QGIS to plot locations on map of US by zip code?

In QGIS 2.2 there is under the Layers menu, "Add delimited text layer". The window that opens allows you to browse to find your csv file, and choose the columns that contain the X and Y coordinates. After clicking OK you need to also choose what coordinate system the points are referenced in (hint: Long/Lat degrees using the WGS84 datum is EPSG code 4326). And the points appear on the map canvas.

This is my first brief post in response to my own question. I admit to being intentionally provocative in my comment postings, and am truly grateful for the community's response. So, given that there must be other "newbies" out there who may be reluctant to ask so-called "dumb questions", I would counsel that the only truly "dumb questions" are the ones you keep to yourself. Accordingly, I intend to try to do something like a journal in recounting the trials and tribulations of my own struggle to get this package to do my bidding. Here goes.

I first learned of QGIS when I was about to hit the button to download and ultimately purchase MapInfo. As I was moving my hand to the enter key, I noticed somehow out of the corner of my eye that there was no Mac version of MapInfo. So, I stopped my hand and went off in search of a Mac mapping application. All I wanted to do was to plot some cities on a map of the US. Nothing fancier than that.

To make a long story short, I found QGIS, downloaded it, read a few pages of the documentation, quickly learned that there was very little there that actually instructed me on how to use the package and I set off on my own. I searched the web numerous times looking for help, found this site, and also found quite a bit of other help on other sites, including videos, but all were keyed to the earlier versions, so were only marginally helpful given the changes made to the GUI and approach to using 2.2.

These "parallel" help sites became allegories and riddles for me to solve in my attempts to use 2.2. Thankfully many years ago I was a developer (remember minicomputers and DEC VAXes?), though for most of the past 15 years I have been managing large groups of credentialed technologists, rather than being buried deep within the bowels of OS's and compilers and apps. I am well enough oriented to these high speed sewing machines to be able to find my way around, despite creating lots of trouble and frustration for myself in the process.

So, the first order of business was to learn how to navigate QGIS. There is precious little that I found to orient the new user. I have found that most software documentation is written as though the user already knows how to use the system. I am sure that is not the intent, but that is the experience I can best describe mine to be, and QGIS is no exception.

Accordingly, the first thing I would suggest is that QGIS be documented with a quick-start guide, or a "how to immediately use QGIS to plot some data on a map" guide. If these things exist, I never found them, so they should be featured more prominently. The search function on the documentation pages returns "no resulst found" for nearly all of my searches. That is a pretty bad metric IMHO (or I am incredibly incompetent, which is altogether possible, but even incompetent's like me can be taught - eventually ;) ).

More in my next post...got to go earn my living

@BobM here's my go-to QGIS learning document: http://manual.linfiniti.com/en/index.html

I would argue that your problems are not with QGIS, but with learning GIS in general... if that is not the case, I would suggest tackling the issue as you would with ArcGIS or Mapinfo. I think you'll find that again it is not QGIS 2.2 that is hindering your ability to use the application, or any version of QGIS for that matter.

I sometimes struggle with GIS.StackExchange as well - I found that it is NOT a beginners guide type of forum, but a forum for specific GIS (what is GIS anyway these days???) tasks. If you're looking to do a simple tabular join, or plot XY, you'll likely not find it on this forum.

I see you've accomplished your goals, but some more detail into what your data looked like and what you wanted for an end product would have been much more useful then the multi-paragraph account of your frustration with a small upgrade in QGIS versions.

I am by far no expert in GIS, although I have been using them for some years now. My initial training was done under ARCGIS and sometime along the way I first heard about QGIS. Tried it then, when it was truly limited and had to leave it aside for a while. Eventually I returned to a later version and have been using it ever since.

I agree that the older QGIS forum was much more newbie-friendly and that Stack Exchange has a steeper entry level, with most users being much more knowledgeable than in the original forum. And as a recent installer of QGIS 2.2, I have also noticed the lack of specific learning material. But as a more experienced user of QGIS, I can tell you that this will gradually be solved. People will in the next few months produce more 2.2 tutorials and that issue will surely be minimized.

From my own experience, QGIS can do pretty much anything I would do with ARCGIS, even much more complicated tasks than plotting dots on a map (although it also does that sort of things quite neatly).