For those of you in the self-service Store Locator Plus® WordPress plugins camp you are going to want to spend time protecting your Google API Keys. For those using our Store Locator Plus® managed SaaS service, this is yet another article you can skip.
The basic configuration of Google API Keys tells you to turn off ALL restrictions on the first API key you setup with Google. Turns out a lot of people have issues with configuring the keys properly and getting them put in the right place.
To make matters more complicated, some lower-end web hosting companies don’t understand security and in turn shut off critical web services that do nothing to improve security; Like disabling all communication between the web server and Google. That breaks things like the ability to Geocode locations in Store Locator Plus®.
This article is here to tell our WordPress plugin users how to properly secure their Google API keys for web hosts are configured properly.