geomaps New GeoMaps feature to limit Google Maps API requests

[Alejandro]

Hi,

After Google's pricing changes for Google Maps kicked in, many users have reached out with concerns about having to pay for something that was always free in the past. While this depends entirely on how much site traffic you have, some users have already begun to pay the bills! The majority of API requests generated on sites may come from two services. The javascript API which is used to render the dynamic maps, and the static API, which is used to display the map in the listing header.

For the static map, if you find that this is causing too many requests and costing you a lot of money, then you should disable this feature altogether.

For the dynamic maps, there's now a new feature to only load the map when the user clicks a button, instead of doing it on every page load, regardless of whether the user looks at the map or not. The new feature can be found in the GeoMaps Add-on configuration and it can be enabled individually for the different maps on the site:

When enabled, the map will display like this:

I hope that with this feature in place you will be able to substantially reduce the number of Google Maps API requests on your site and with that, avoid having to pay an inflated bill every month.

How do I install this GeoMaps update?

This feature is only available for GeoMaps in JReviews 3. To install the update use the Remote Install & Update page in the JReviews dashboard to update the GeoMaps Add-on.

Can I change the default background image?

Sure, with with a simple CSS override you can use your own image. Just use this CSS:

.jrMapCanvas {
    background-image: url(https://picsum.photos/540/320)
}

 

Alejandro