I've been putting off writing this for a long time.
The short version is: If you have an Android or Apple phone or tablet, use the mobile app.
Google generously provides a monthly credit of $200 for using Google Maps on a website. For several years that was enough to cover the traffic this site receives. And then it wasn't.
I don't mind paying for the overage sometimes, but when something happens to get people checking my map (e.g. severe weather), the cost of that is mostly on me. As of today (May 15, 2020) three people have donated money to fund the site, and that has helped. But it simply isn't realistic for me to rely on donations to cover the random surges in visitors.
But I had to do something to control costs, so I set a limit on the number of map views allowed each day. When that limit is reached, the map will show an error message.
Google does not currently charge for Google Maps when used in a mobile app, so no limit was necessary for those. Again, please use the mobile app if you can.
Finally, there's a related issue that I need to address:
Based on what I've seen in my logs, some folks are frequently refreshing/reloading the page, presumably in order to see the latest incident data. If you're doing that, please stop. The page is designed to automatically fetch the latest incident data on its own. (I suspect that frequently reloading the page may be part of why my bill is going up.) If the page is not automatically fetching the latest incidents for you, contact me and I'll check it out.
Respectfully,
David M. Wilson
Last edited on: May 15, 2020 3:38 PM
The short version is: If you have an Android or Apple phone or tablet, use the mobile app.
Google generously provides a monthly credit of $200 for using Google Maps on a website. For several years that was enough to cover the traffic this site receives. And then it wasn't.
I don't mind paying for the overage sometimes, but when something happens to get people checking my map (e.g. severe weather), the cost of that is mostly on me. As of today (May 15, 2020) three people have donated money to fund the site, and that has helped. But it simply isn't realistic for me to rely on donations to cover the random surges in visitors.
But I had to do something to control costs, so I set a limit on the number of map views allowed each day. When that limit is reached, the map will show an error message.
Google does not currently charge for Google Maps when used in a mobile app, so no limit was necessary for those. Again, please use the mobile app if you can.
Finally, there's a related issue that I need to address:
Based on what I've seen in my logs, some folks are frequently refreshing/reloading the page, presumably in order to see the latest incident data. If you're doing that, please stop. The page is designed to automatically fetch the latest incident data on its own. (I suspect that frequently reloading the page may be part of why my bill is going up.) If the page is not automatically fetching the latest incidents for you, contact me and I'll check it out.
Respectfully,
David M. Wilson
Last edited on: May 15, 2020 3:38 PM