Google Maps API Now Requiring Payment

Working on a website that is using Hot Themes extension Hot Maps and the module is suddenly broken. The browser console is pointing to a an invalid API code. I logged into to Google to update the API and copying the Key I have been using for months, but the map is still broken.

Hot Themes tech support is telling me to go to the page to get the API Key.

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/get-api-key

When i get there I am being informed about a new pricing structure starting on June 11, 2018.

Clicked on “Get Started”.

Selected “Maps” and clicked “Continue”.

I used the down arrow to select the “Project”.

I am now presented to “Create Billing Account”.

This was a free service. I clicked “Cancel” and got the next screen which looked promising.

I was brought to a screen to enter a credit card. I am doing this for a company I work for and don’t want to enter my personal card info, so I was stuck.

I am hoping to get this resolved. I have been in contact with HotJoomlaTemplates and I am not sure they know about this new process.

 

Check Website To See If It Is Optimized

There are so many tools out there to evaluate your website, but somehow when it comes from Google it is the one I trust the most. Google has been writing the book on page ranking for years, so I am putting my faith in their tool to be a good one.

I ran an test on my new site as comparison to the old site and this tool made me feel really good about the work I was doing. I was so happy about it I decided to make this post. Here is a link to Google’s tool.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Let us know if this helped you…

 

Google Calendar RSS Feed Showing Wrong Date & Time

Had an issue with a RSS feed from Google Calendar where the date and time was wrong in the feed. It was right in the calendar and in calendar view; however, if you viewed the specific details the date and time was off by hours. It turned out to be that specific calendar’s time zone. Here is a video that shows the steps I walked through.

Let us know if this helps you….

 

Outlook -The synchronisation failed – check the Sync tab for further details

Had a client that uses “CodePLex – Outlook Google Calendar Sync” to sync Outlook calendars with their Google calendars. They were getting a bunch of different errors. The following link lead me down the right path.

https://help.toutapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/203348310-A-Program-Is-Trying-To-Access-Outlook-Email-Address-Information

  1. Open Outlook 2010, go to “File/Options/Trust Center” menu item, and then click on the “Trust Center Settings” button at the right side of the dialog box.
  2. From there, select the “Programmatic Access” menu item. At the bottom of this dialog, note what your “Antivirus status” is. If it is “Invalid” then close Outlook, navigate to where its “OUTLOOK” program icon is on your disk (typically it sits in the “Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Office” folder), and then right-click this icon and select “Run as administrator” from the pop-up-menu. If you get a warning, then select “allow” or “yes” to continue.
  3. Then in Outlook, go back to “Programmatic Access” as described above, and you should see your antivirus status updated to “Valid” (assuming you have an up-to-date antivirus program on your computer).
  4. Exit Outlook.

It seems like there was an issue with the trust center and antivirus. I discovered there wasn’t any antivirus on the machine. When I installed their Vipre anti-virus and restarted the machine this fixed the issue.

Let us know if this helped you…

 

Gmail in Outlook – Can Log Into Gmail But Outlook Won’t Authenticate

Had a customer who needed to change their Gmail password. When they opened Outlook it asked for the  new password, so they entered it. Outlook keep prompting for the new password.

The customer could go to Gmail and log right in.

It turned out to be Google needs this account to be “Less secure apps” section of your Gmail account. It should be here https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps. Turn on this feature.

Let us know if this solution helps you…

 

 

Using RegEx to Get IP in Google Analytics

For privacy reasons Google doesn’t just offer up the IP addresses of your traffic, but there are ways to get it. I have set up a filter in my Analytics account to accomplish this.

Here is an article that helped me figure this out.

Basic Google Analytics Filters for Every Site

Here is the page that helped me determine the regular expression needed to include the IP address information.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/ip.html

Let us know if this helps you….

 

Is Google Ranking Websites With SSL higher?

We have been hearing about this since the beginning of the year, and yes we are hearing this from our hosting companies. We used Sucuri a number of times to have a some nasty website attacks cleaned up. They have also recently paired up with some hosting companies such as SiteGround because of the number of attacks across the web.

I watched a recent webinar from Sucuri and they are saying it is true that Google will make your site less important in their search results if you are not using an SSL. This is for straight HTML sites as well as an CMS ECommerce site.

The cost for an SSL is around $100 per year. Installing the SSL and configuring your website to work with the SSL takes a bit of work, but we are use to it. If you are interested in upgrading your site security and need some help feel free to contact us.

Let us know if this helped you…

 

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