Hotspots Docs

Centering the map using the user's location (Pro feature)

Starting with Hotspots 3.5 there is an option to center the map using the user's location. You can enable this option by navigating to the hotspots menu item and in the settings set the map centering to "by using user's position".

This options uses the freegeoIP web service. First we try to determine the user's IP and then we run it against the freegeoIP database. If the database returns information about the IP in question we use it as the center position of the map, if it doesn't return information about the IP we will use the default location set in the global configuration of Hotspots.

The freegeoIP webservice is limited to 10 000 request per hour. Since we cache each request we make to the service, this means that you will reach this limit if you have more than 10 000 users per hour visiting your map.

Since we use the IP to determine the user's location this method doesn't provide the street and number accuracy. This method can determine with high accuracy onle the city and country.

If you are testing Hotspots on localhost your location cannot be determined, because your server will always return the 127.0.0.1 IP address. If you want to test this function you need to run Hotspots on a live server on the internet. Also if the user is behind a proxy this method won't be able to always determine the correct location of the user.

Please consider donating to the freegeoIP service!