geocoding Archives | Page 2 of 3 | Store Locator Plus®

Address Lookup Failures On WPSLP

Posted by lcleveland in Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

If you have recently ported a WordPress site from another server or from a staging site to a production site and the address lookup in Store Locator Plus is failing — you may have an incomplete port. There are a few simple ways to tell that the WordPress configuration is incorrect. This video for our WordPress folks will help you determine if your “ported configuration” is the culprit.

Thankfully our MySLP users never have to deal with this sort of issue — but for our WordPress users that may have an incorrectly ported site, watch this:

Google Maps API Returning Inaccurate Results

Posted by lcleveland in Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Store Locator, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

Google does not openly advertise the fact that they have different location data for different users. However there is good anecdotal evidence an hearsay that Google Maps API returning inaccurate results may be by design.

The evidence is most prevalent in the geocoding of locations. The latitude and longitude Google assigns to different addresses is not “set in stone”. It is an interesting anomaly given the fact that places on earth should not move with regard to their latitude & longitude outside of plate tectonics.

The team at Store Locator Plus® has long held a theory that Google intentionally subverts accurate location data; quite likely to gain competitive advantage for their own products and services.

Protecting Google API Keys

Posted by lcleveland in Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

For those of you in the self-service Store Locator Plus® WordPress plugins camp you are going to want to spend time protecting your Google API Keys. For those using our Store Locator Plus® managed SaaS service, this is yet another article you can skip.

The basic configuration of Google API Keys tells you to turn off ALL restrictions on the first API key you setup with Google. Turns out a lot of people have issues with configuring the keys properly and getting them put in the right place.

To make matters more complicated, some lower-end web hosting companies don’t understand security and in turn shut off critical web services that do nothing to improve security; Like disabling all communication between the web server and Google. That breaks things like the ability to Geocode locations in Store Locator Plus®.

This article is here to tell our WordPress plugin users how to properly secure their Google API keys for web hosts are configured properly.