Troubleshooting Common Issues with the Google Maps API

Is your website unable to load Google Maps API, or do you see events in the ocean off Africa’s coast? These are some of the most common Google Maps issues we encounter. Here are the steps we took to troubleshoot Google Maps.

The problem could be that you haven’t checked the “Enable Google Maps” checkbox on the backend, which is located under Events Settings Display.

When enabled, you will be able to embed Google maps in your reactjs event listings.

The Events Calendar will try to add a map to single event views by default, as well as an external link to Google Maps.

Using the permanently in the events editor, you can block either or both of these things. Here’s how those options look:

Insert a Google Maps API key.

Before proceeding, please ensure that you have completed the steps outlined in our article on adding a Google Maps API key. Maps cannot be displayed without a valid key.

Correct venue information: Google Maps API

If Events Calendar PRO captures broken or lost facility information, an admin screen notification will be displayed. Because this notice will include a link to a tool that can be used to repair your venue data, which can find in the Map Settings option of the Events Options menu.

Look for the “Fix Venues Data” button. Please click it, then refresh your Map View to see if that changes anything. Fixing Venue Data is a tool that appears only when broken data is detected.

Make use of coordinates.

Great job if the previous step worked! If not, we can take another route.

Navigate to Events Venues this time. You can use the latitude and longitude coordinates when you click Edit on one of the venues. For each location, select that option. Confirm the coordinates, save the venue, and then see if the map’s appearance changes.

When the Google Maps API cannot recognize an address, entering the venue’s latitude and longitude allows The Events Calendar to communicate specific coordinates to the API.

Look for potential conflicts: Google Maps API

If the different stages do not fix the issue, the next step is to test for conflicts to see if another plugin or theme is contributing to the problem.

It’s even a useful concept to examine for Javascript errors. For more information, see Using Your Browser to Diagnose JavaScript Errors.

You may notice a JavaScript error in Google Maps, such as:

You’ve used the Google Maps API several times on this page.
This may lead to unforeseen errors.

You may be able to fix this by deactivating any other plugins or themes on your site that use Google Maps or by dequeuing the JavaScript for Google Maps within Events Calendar Pro by adding the following to your child theme’s functions. Php

<?php/** * Unregisters the Google Maps API script on Events Calendar PRO. */add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'ecp_remove_google_maps_api', 100 );functionecp_remove_google_maps_api() {  wp_deregister_script( 'tribe-gmaps');

Troubleshooting map view

The map view is one of the advanced views available with Events Calendar Pro. When enabled, a large map appears alongside the main calendar, displaying upcoming events with venues assigned to them.

Visualizing events on a map is fantastic, but we occasionally encounter an issue where the map shows no events and is centered off the coast of Africa.

That’s enough to make anyone wonder what’s wrong, so we’ve developed a few solutions to help troubleshoot and resolve the problem.

The map view shows the area off the coast of Africa.

Events occurring in the ocean off the coast of Africa are uncommon and are unlikely to produce the desired outcome. This frequently occurs when you do not have a venue that Google recognizes, so events are mapped at the default location of latitude-longitude 0, 0.

So, if you encounter this problem, please see the previous tips on repairing venue data or using latitude and longitude coordinates.

Clearing the cache

Please clear your cache if the preceding steps have not resolved the issue and you are using a caching plugin. Otherwise, you may have to wait a while before seeing the results of any changes you’ve made.

Finishing up

We hope this article has helped you resolve any issues you may have had with our Google Maps integration, but if not, please get in touch with us at our help desk, and we’d be happy to look into it further.