Simple Location

Nothing else is needed to save locations. Looking up addresses, drawing maps, and adding weather and elevation use outside services, chosen under Settings > Simple Location > Providers (IndieWeb > Location when the IndieWeb plugin is installed). Some need no key: Nominatim for addresses, Open-Meteo, MET Norway and the US National Weather Service for weather, Open Topo Data for elevation, and your own weather stations. The others need an account, and an API key entered on the API Keys tab, where each service has its own section. See “How do I set up each service?”

Without a map provider, no maps are shown. Without a geocoding provider, addresses aren’t looked up. Without a weather provider, weather isn’t added.

Most services have a free allowance and charge, or stop, beyond it. The plugin only asks a service when you look up a location or publish a post, which usually stays well within it. You must follow each provider’s terms. If a key stops working, or a quota runs out, administrators are told; see “How do I know when a provider stops working?”

Sign up with the service, create an API key, and enter it in the service’s section of the API Keys tab. Notes for each:

• Google Maps Platform – needs a billing account, and gives each API a monthly free allowance. In the Google Cloud console, enable the APIs for what you use Google for: the Maps Static API for maps, the Geocoding API for addresses, the Elevation API for elevation, and the Places API (New) for venues. Restrict the key to those APIs. For maps, see also “How do I protect my map API keys?”
• Mapbox – a public token (starting pk.) draws the maps. To list your own styles in the settings, enter a secret token with the styles:list scope as the Mapbox API Key, your username, and the public token as the Mapbox Map API Key; the secret token is never shown on your site.
• HERE – one API key for maps, addresses and weather.
• LocationIQ – one API key for maps, addresses and venues.
• Foursquare – venues, with a service API key from the Foursquare developer console. Place search is a Pro endpoint, billed per request after a small free allowance.
• MapQuest – one API key for maps and addresses.
• Geoapify – one API key for maps and addresses.
• TomTom – maps.
• Stadia Maps – static maps need a paid plan. The same key finds venues.
• OpenRouteService – one API key for addresses and elevation.
• GeoNames – addresses and elevation, with your username instead of a key. After signing up, enable the free web services on your GeoNames account page, or every lookup is refused.
• Pelias – addresses and venues from a Pelias server: enter its URL, and its API key if it needs one.
• OpenWeatherMap – the plugin uses One Call API 3.0, which needs its own “One Call by Call” subscription, with a payment card, even for the free daily calls. A key without it is refused.
• Weatherbit , Weatherstack , Visual Crossing and Pirate Weather – an API key each.
• Xweather – a client ID and client secret. People who share their personal weather station with PWSWeather.com get a free contributor account. You can choose whether personal weather stations are used.
• Meteostat – historic weather, with an API key from RapidAPI.
• Nominatim, Open-Meteo, MET Norway, Open Topo Data and the National Weather Service need no key. Nominatim’s public server is for light use only; you can set your own, with the public one as a fallback. Open-Meteo is free for non-commercial use; commercial use needs a key. Open-Meteo and Open Topo Data can also use your own server.
• The custom map provider, custom station provider and WeeWX use your own servers; see their questions below. Compass, Dawarich and GeoPulse find where you are; see “How do I use Dawarich or GeoPulse?”

add_post_type_support( ‘geo-location’); add_post_type_support( ‘weather’ );

The software uses two custom features to declare that the post type supports these features, otherwise the location and weather features do not show in the editor.

The Map Style setting, under Map Settings, chooses a family: Standard, Light, Dark, Satellite or Terrain. Each map provider draws its closest style, so maps keep their look when you change providers. A provider without that kind of style, such as Geoapify for satellite, draws its standard style. Each provider also has its own style setting, with all its styles. It is empty by default, which uses the Map Style setting; choosing a style there uses that style instead. Sites that chose a provider style before version 6.1.0 keep it. A post can have its own style family too, chosen under Map Style in its location box, such as Satellite for a hike while the site’s maps stay Standard. If the map provider has no style of that kind, the post’s map uses the site’s style, and the post keeps its choice for a provider that has one. A post with its own style other than Standard keeps it in dark mode. Theme functions take it as an argument too, for example get_post_map( $post, array( 'style_family' => 'satellite' ) ) . Google’s light and dark styles are its road map recolored with Google’s silver and night styling.

With Dark Mode Maps on, maps also have the provider’s dark style for visitors whose system is set to dark mode. Browsers only load the one they show. For providers served from your site, the dark style is stored as its own image.

The terms of service of most map providers expressly forbid this. While the likelihood of one of these providers coming after an individual is slim, this would be a violation of WordPress plugin guidelines. This is why the plugin does not save maps to the media library.

Geoapify’s terms allow storing its static maps, so Geoapify maps are served from your site. The first time a map is shown, your site fetches it from Geoapify, stores it in wp-content/uploads/sloc-maps , and serves it from there. Your API key stays on your server, and visitors’ browsers never contact Geoapify. The image links are signed with a secret only your site knows, so nobody else can use your site to request other maps with your key.

Stadia Maps maps are stored the same way when you enter a Stadia Maps API key. Your site then fetches them from Stadia’s cacheable endpoint, whose images you may keep for as long as you have a paid Stadia subscription. Each map from the cacheable endpoint costs many more credits than a standard one (see Stadia’s pricing), and each high-density copy and each refresh is a new map, so consider setting Refresh Stored Maps After to 0. Without a key, or with Serve Maps From This Site turned off, maps load from Stadia’s standard endpoint, which may not be stored.

Maps from your own custom map server (see the custom map provider below) are stored the same way, when it signs its URLs or needs no key. Maps the server marks as private, such as Stadia Maps, whose terms forbid caching, are never stored: visitors are sent to the server’s signed image link instead. So are maps where the server had to draw its default map, which are asked for again after 5 minutes. With only a plain client key, the server marks every map private, so those maps are loaded from the server. Maps from your own TileServer GL server are stored the same way. It needs the full tileserver-gl build, version 4.6 or later; the light build can’t draw static maps. Choose its style from the ones the server lists. Each location is a dot in the marker color, or set a marker icon from the server’s icon folder to draw that instead. The credit under the map, when you choose it there, is the one the server gives for the style; the credit on the image is the server’s own static attribution text, set in its configuration. Images are fetched by your site’s server, so a TileServer GL on a private address, such as localhost, needs WordPress’s http_request_host_is_external filter to allow it.

These settings appear under Map Settings when your map provider allows storing its maps: * Serve Maps From This Site: on by default. Turn it off to load maps from the provider, with the API key in the image link. * Refresh Stored Maps After (Days): 30 by default. After this many days, the next page that shows a map fetches it again and replaces the stored image in place. Pages cached with the old image keep working. If the provider can’t be reached, the stored image is still shown. 0 never fetches stored maps again. A provider whose terms limit how long maps may be stored is refreshed at least that often. * Clear Stored Maps: deletes every stored map image. Stored maps are otherwise never deleted, including maps of locations you later changed or made private. Pages kept by a page cache may show broken images until their cache expires.

Most weather providers’ terms ask for a credit where their weather is shown, so weather looked up from a provider records which one it came from, and its credit is shown with it, linked to the provider. The Weather Credits setting, under General Settings, puts the credits next to the weather (the default) or once in the page footer. Open-Meteo requires its credit next to its data, so it stays there either way. Providers without a credit requirement have no credit: the US National Weather Service, whose data is public domain, and HERE, Visual Crossing, weatherstack and Pirate Weather, where no requirement was found. Weather saved before version 6.1.0, or entered by hand, doesn’t record a provider, so it has no credit. Environment Canada’s data is under the Open Government Licence – Canada, which asks for the source to be credited. OpenWeather and Weath