This release focuses on the Google API changes which are in effect since January 22nd 2016 and helps fixing related potential issues.
An update to the latest version is – as always – highly recommended. For more details about this release please see below.
Let us know what you think about this new release by submitting a review or leaving a comment below!
If you want to keep up to date with the latest Maps Marker Pro development, please follow @MapsMarker on twitter (= most current updates), on Facebook, Google+ or subscribe to news via RSS or via RSS/email.
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Now let´s get to the highlights of pro v2.7.3:
Google has changed the Google Maps API on June 22nd 2016, requiring a mandatory Google API key for all sites, which call the Google Maps API services for the first time after June 22nd 2016 – full details here.
If this is true for your site/domain, you need to register a free API key to be able to continue using Google services on your site. v2.7.3 assists you in verifying this and helping you through this process – in addition to our updated tutorial on how to register a Google Maps API key at https://mapsmarker.com/google-maps-api-key.
We discovered that this change could also lead to issues, if another plugin or theme also enqueues the Google Maps API – in particular if that implementation does not take your Google Maps API key in account or does not load all libraries needed for Maps Marker Pro. As a result maps or address search may not be working anymore.
So in order to prevent this, we added a new compatibility check. If this is true for your site, you will see the following admin notice:
To fix this, you can either manually remove the additional Google Maps API calls from third party plugin or themes or – as we would recommend – enable the new compatibility option “Deregister Google Maps API scripts enqueued by third parties”:
This will call the wp_dequeue_script()-function for all Google Maps API call from third party plugins or themes – preventing them from being loaded.
With Chrome 50 Google made a significant change to the geolocation support of its browser: all applications requesting the current position of the user (not just for Maps Marker Pro´s geolocation feature) are only allowed anymore to retrieve the current position of the user if the site is setup to be delivered securely via https – users will see the following warning instead:
See more details about this decision by Google at https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/04/geolocation-on-secure-contexts-only. Geolocation will still work on non-https sites if the users access the site via alternative browsers like Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer – anyway it could be likely that those browsers will also add a similar security restriction in the future.
So if you need the Maps Marker Pro geolocation featue on your site (which with v2.7 even gets more usable as you can sort the list of markers based on the current position of the user), it is strongly advised to migrate your site to https. Some hosters already provide free https certificates from letsencrypt.org for example. For configurations needed within your WordPress site in order to configure it to support https, please have a look at tutorials like https://css-tricks.com/moving-to-https-on-wordpress/.
As https has more advantages for your site than just geolocation working again with Google Chrome 50+ (like securing the data integrity, sender authentication and user privacy as well as higher Google ranking as https is used as ranking signal), we strongly advise to switch your site to https only if you haven´t done so yet.
Thanks to many motivated contributors, this release includes the following updated translations:
If you want to contribute to translations (new Hindi translators would be appreciated!), please visit https://translate.mapsmarker.com/projects/lmm for more information.
Please note that translators are also compensated for their contribution – for example if a translation is finished less than 50%, the translator receives a free 25 licenses pack worth €249 as a compensation for completing the translation to 100%.
Please understand that we are not able to promise any release dates for new features. The roadmap for major new features gives you an idea where Maps Marker Pro is heading – anyway we just want to keep the flexibility to add optimizations and bugfixes with rather unplanned minor releases resulting mostly from users feedback.
Please subscribe to this blog (via RSS or Email) or follow @MapsMarker on twitter (= most current updates) if you want to stay up to date with the latest development news.
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compatibility check and option to deregister Google Maps API scripts added by 3rd party themes or plugins |
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compatibility check for “Page Builder by SiteOrigin” & “Yoast SEO” where a special settings combination is causing maps to break |
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list of markers-searchbox now also supports enter to start a search (thx Jeff!) |
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show loading indicator when using search in list of markers (thx Jeff!) |
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enhanced Google Maps API key support which is mandatory since June 22nd 2016 |
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compatibility check for Autoptimize plugin was broken as plugin was updated |
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“improve map” and “ToS” links on layer maps with Google as basemaps were not clickable |
| Translation updates In case you want to help with translations, please visit the web-based translation plattform |
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updated German translation |
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updated Russian translation thanks to Ekaterina Golubina (supported by Teplitsa of Social Technologies – http://te-st.ru) and Vyacheslav Strenadko, http://slavblog.ru |
How to download / update
The easiest way to update is to use the WordPress update process: login with an user who has admin privileges, navigate to Dashboard / Updates, select plugins to update and press the button “Update Plugins”. The pro plugin checks every 12 hours if a new version is available. You can also manually trigger the update check by going to Plugins and clicking on the link “Manually check for updates” next to “Maps Marker Pro”:
If you do not see the link “Check for updates” and are using a version below 1.7, please update manually once by downloading the current package from https://www.mapsmarker.com/download-pro and overwritting the existing plugin files on your server via FTP. This might be needed on several hosts, which use outdated SSL libraries, which prevent Maps Marker Pro from making a secure connection to retrieve the update package from mapsmarker.com. Pro v1.7 includes a workaround for those kind of servers and the following updates should work again as usual. If you are affected and need help, please open a support ticket.
SHA-256 hash value:
A1D12D157FF68C70D00BF7718DBB75A1804610EF5D51208F10005C345D3B7C7C
Click here for a tutorial on how to verify the integrity of the plugin package (recommended if the plugin package for a new installation was not downloaded from https://www.mapsmarker.com – verification is not needed though if the automatic update process is used)
No additional steps are required if you are updating from a beta version.