The SAPAA website is experiencing a temporary error with its Protected Area map due to changes in WordPress hosting policies. Users can access a workaround through the Interactive Map. Updates are expected by June 2026.
Please note that all maps have been updated. Let webmaster@sapaastewards.com know if one was missed!
If you visit a Protected Area page and notice an error such as the one on the left/above, don’t worry, it is being fixed.
The Broken Map Work Around
If you come across the above error, SAPAA is updating the underlying code. The work around is to access the Protected Area Interactive Map and look up the site in the navigation panel to the left.
All maps are expected to be updated by the end of June 2026.
If you are curious about why we are getting this error, how we fixed it, and website hosting in general, read on!
Start of Really Boring Details – WordPress Hosting
The SAPAA website is built on a platform called ‘WordPress’. WordPress comes in two flavours and we use the ‘wordpress.com‘ variety. Basically this means that our website is hosted by a private company called Automattic, Inc.. The other flavour of WordPress is self-hosted (see: WordPress.org).
If you are a nonprofit, there are a zillion options to host a website each focusing on slightly different things (and the list is WAY beyond the scope of this article. Alternatives includes: Wix, Squarespace, Weblium, Morweb, WildApricot, and SITE123).
For SAPAA, wordpress.com is the best compromise between flexibility and hosting support. In addition, it was relatively cheap under the ‘Personal’ plan hosting tier (about $40-60 per year).
WordPress Change
One of the challenges of using a system hosted by others is that they can make changes which affect you. This is the reason for the above error message. For the techies in the crowd, the problem is that WordPress is de-supporting ‘iFrame’ except on its higher tier plans (e.g. above the ‘Personal’ tier). A linked Google map relies on this technology and this is the reason the map rendering is failing.
When SAPAA stood up this site in 2021, the ‘iFrame’ linkage was supported at the WordPress ‘Personal’ plan level. We got 5 years out of this tier but now need to upgrade to the ‘Premium’ plan and re-link the maps on the webpages.
A Side Benefit of a Broken Map
By updating the maps, SAPAA is able to collect the latitude, longitude, and zoom level to render a particular site’s Google map. This creates a data side benefit for the SIR-SAPAA application. For example, we can potentially use this information within the SIR-SAPAA application.
Conclusion
Updating 260+ pages is not fun – but even the cheapest technology has its costs!