After update to TNG 15 heat map not showing

[Josef Thiel]

Hello,

I have just installed TNG 15 (upgrade from 14.06). I have followed the instructions exactly and have not received any error messages so far.

 

BUT, I have just realised that the ‘heatmap’ is no longer displayed. When I click on ‘heatmap’, a white area simply remains, as if Google maps had not been connected or set up.

 

I have no mods installed or active.

Has anyone had similar observations or experiences and can help or give a hint to reactivate the heat map? Thank you very much.

[theKiwi]

Does the map show if you refresh the page, or force reload the page?

Does the Console show any error messages?

What is the URL to a page on your site that shows this problem?

Roger

[Yzr1]

Is TNG even passing records to Google in V15?  I noticed in every attempt, TNG has been showing zero records selected.  For instance, when I go to Places and select heatmap, it displays a blank screen with Places (0) on the screen.  If I go to largest localities, I show 247 USA locations, I select heatmap and again blank screen and Places (0).   So I would think that maybe zero locations are actually being fed into the mapping script or whatever by TNG.

[Yzr1]

I also go into surnames and pick a surname, select heatmap and again see   Places (0) and a blank screen.

[Yzr1]

My main page template is live on https:\\www.ancestries.me.  If you goto search and surnames, then try a heatmap, you might see the same Places (0).  Again this is a symptom that should point us to the problem with the heatmaps.

 

 

[JMM]

3 hours ago, Yzr1 said:

Is TNG even passing records to Google in V15?  I noticed in every attempt, TNG has been showing zero records selected.  For instance, when I go to Places and select heatmap, it displays a blank screen with Places (0) on the screen.  If I go to largest localities, I show 247 USA locations, I select heatmap and again blank screen and Places (0).   So I would think that maybe zero locations are actually being fed into the mapping script or whatever by TNG.

Yzr1,

I have a stupid question: do your places actually have coordinates (i.e. latitude & longitude) assigned to each (or at least some) places?

In TNG | Administration | Places, when you select any of the places listed (i.e. cities or towns or villages), do any of them have coordinates (i.e. latitude & longitude) assigned to them, similar to this screenshot?

In this case with your problem, the Zoom field and Place Level field are not important, but in order for anything to show up on maps, both the Latitude field and Longitude field must have valid coordinates in them.

Regards,
John

[Yzr1]

The geocoding api isn't present in TNG15?  Is there a mod that might add it for me?  When I go into "Places" under administrator I can click on one location and it will  geolocate using the given  City, County, State, Country and autofill the coordinates and display a map.  Do i really have to click on every single "place" before it will geolocate?    I realize some records will not have clear place names, but most, I simply select that record and it will geolocate.   But I would have to click on every place record.  If it accepts the place name given, why won't it automatically autofill without me clicking on each one?   It knows how to get its own coordinates based on the place name, this shows it does.  So why......

 

 

[Yzr1]

Never mind, after flipping back and forth, and back and forth, I finally found the geocode tab.  I really don't know why I didn't see it sooner.

While I am still unsure why TNG doesn't automatically try to autogeocode each place itself,  I did see where I can go under Administrator, then select "Places".  Once the places page opens, select the "Geocode" tab at the top of the page.  Select your tree, for limit, scroll to "no limit",  choose "ignore all" or "first match", and then hit the Geocode button. 

That takes care of the zero records, all places now have coordinates.  Still no heatmaps.   The queries now show records eg  Places(160), but the page is still blank.  I did refresh my browser cache and tried other tricks, but still no heatmaps and just a blank page.  Again, I have my sandbed TNG site live at https://ancestries.me    Maybe tomorrow it might start working, I ll try again then...  Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution I should try..

[Yzr1]

I had a theory that possibly one google api was enabled but not the other.  I know the Geocoding is functional so I went to Google Cloud and checked the Maps.Javascript.API.  It was enabled.  I show both as enabled.  If one works, both should work.  So why would my maps.javascript.api not be working?

 

• Maps JavaScript API
• Geocoding API

[JMM]

55 minutes ago, Yzr1 said:

That takes care of the zero records, all places now have coordinates.  Still no heatmaps.   The queries now show records eg  Places(160), but the page is still blank.  I did refresh my browser cache and tried other tricks, but still no heatmaps and just a blank page.  Again, I have my sandbed TNG site live at https://ancestries.me    Maybe tomorrow it might start working, I ll try again then...  Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution I should try..

Your heatmap is displaying fine for me.  No idea why it is not displaying any places for you.

[Katryne]

The issue is related to browsers. On my windows 11, maps are displayed on Vivaldi ans Palemoon, but NOT on Firefox and SeaMonkey. That's all I can say.

[Gebhard1]

Hi Everybody, same topic with my site, but I recognized, that with the Template 17 the heatmap works, with Template 203 (bought) it doesn't work. No idea, if this helps the experts to find the bug here

[Katryne]

Hello Gebhard !

If you bought your template by Marsha, ask her. I remember that I had to change my template because the Nr 19 (free and created by Marsha) would not display the maps. I use OSM, not Google.

You might also try the OSM mod.

 

[Gebhard1]

Thanks Katryne, will do

 

[janp]

I Have Tng 15.0.02 and the Heatmap problem is a browser problem or maybe more. Heatmap doesnt work on Firefox and other based on. Chromium browser like Ms Edge and Chrome works maybe. On Safari (Mac) in developer mode heatmap is visible after some refresh and a message by Google: The Heatmap Layer functionality in the Maps JavaScript API is no longer supported. This API was deprecated in May 2025 and will be made unavailable in a later version of the Maps JavaScript API, releasing in May 2026. For more info, see https://developers.google.com/maps/deprecations).

[johnebart]

Heat maps ceased working on all my sites which are all built on Version 15.0.3 template 15.   The placename count works.  The map doesn't load in any of 6 browsers (chrome, firefox, edge, vivaldi, brave, opera) I have tried.

Here is one link to try on my main public site: Place List | Heat Map

I've read preceding posts, though don't see the solution.

Thanks!

 

[Katryne]

I understood that you read all the messages, but I'll repeat myself: it works for me because I use OpenStreetMap.

https://clan.chauvigne.info/heatmap_OSM.php?tree=kati

[johnebart]

Thanks Katryne.  I did read that.  I'm keen to stick with Google maps at all costs, because of the quality of mapping in less populated areas, especially in Asia, Africa and South America.  OSM is great too, but not as good and misses all the choices of layers that Googe can provide.

I do find your map very good too.

Thanks, John

[GOGGS]

Your map loaded fine for me the first time, and then subsequent times it would not (Win 11 / Chrome)... Hmmmm...

 

GOGGS

 

[Katryne]

John, I don't want to promote OSM, but let me explain why I joined. In 2018, Google Maps switched to a paid system, with a bonus of 200 (I think) free visits per day, but one had to register and provide bank details. So I couldn't control my expenses, especially since I have four or five sites that use maps. And I was really happy to have control over the cost, because since the beginning of 2025, all my sites (like all of yours, I'm sure) have been overwhelmed by visits from robots, particularly AI learning robots. One of my sites was blocked because it received 75,000 visits in one day, compared to 100 on a good day. Of course, in the meantime, I found techniques, mods, and plugins to stem this flow of unwanted visits. But imagine what I would have had to pay in royalties to Google Maps. And as for techniques to block unwanted visitors, it's working for now (thanks to the coders), but for how long? In my opinion, there are too many uncertainties with Google Maps.

[theKiwi]

It loaded for me on second loading with a Forced Refresh after the first one.

This looks like the same situation that was addressed by changing the

loading=async

change made some time ago.

I'm not sure just where that situation is currently.

Roger

[johnebart]

Thanks everyone for all the insights. I still haven't found the path forward with the maps problem. 

It seems to be working on this link now with Edge and with Chrome (not the others). Wow: https://www.johnbartholomew.com/bartgen-public/heatmap.php?mybool=AND&nr=50&tree=BART-LINLITHGOW&branch=&mylastname=Bartholomew&lnqualify=contains

This site is fully public.  I am still hitting the map problem in sites that require TNG login.  Those sites have a htaccess challenge on them too.

Katryne, it is an interesting thought that Google puts a limit on hits with the free plan. I need to watch out for that too. I track all the page views with StatCounter and the map views seem to be rarely queried. 

What is interesting is that on the individual map displays for individuals, the Google map loads fine still, so if the bots were successfully opening the pages, I'd quickly hit the 200 limit.

Maps display fin on individual records too: https://www.johnbartholomew.com/bartgen-public/getperson.php?personID=I160&tree=BART-LINLITHGOW

Though not really relevant to this thread Katryne, I put the Guardian bot on my main site too.  Thanks for the tip.  It doesn't stop the Chinese bot query strings in all the different search and display formats.   But now at least I know they just hit the Image Captcha and don't scrape the data itself.

In the attached StatCounter image, you see as sample the bot page view attempts, in spite of the Guardian bot being in place.  I average 1400 hits per day nowfrom China and Singapore.  In the second image, you see a graph of what happened since the bots started in mid September 2025.

I hope someone can still try to figure out the Google map glitch please and why it now seems to be ok on some sites and not others.  I think it affects a lot of us.  I feature quite a lot of direct image links to maps across my sites.

All was working well when I started writing this post - and now, it doesn't!  How odd. Something is quite unstable here.

John

 

[johnebart]

22 hours ago, GOGGS said:

Your map loaded fine for me the first time, and then subsequent times it would not (Win 11 / Chrome)... Hmmmm...

 

GOGGS

 

Indeed.  It is unstable and unpredicatable.

[Katryne]

Last month, for two days, the map background OSM-FR that I choose for my sites was unavailable when zooming in on the smallest details, and this was the case on my TNG and PIWIGO sites: the map server was, like us, suffering from an invasion of AI robots. I changed the base map for 48 hours, then it returned to normal, giving the base map managers time to find a solution. Perhaps Google Maps also suffered this kind of attack and will return to normal.

 

[GOGGS]

Just FYI, Google used to have $200 free usage per month (not hits or maps or pins), which allowed me 10's of thousands of pins and lots of map "draws" without ever getting a charge. They've updated their pricing model and it seems even more generous now...

A known problem with the way TNG is using Google maps is the restriction of the API key. I tried restricting my key to only my URL, etc. and it caused map loading problems. So if you have any restrictions on any of the API's, you might want to try removing them. You will get warnings from Google, but I've never had an issue...

 

GOGGS