Weekly Links Roundup – Google Maps, FAQ Pages, Stripe vs Paypal, MemberPress

This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

If you have a Google map in your site, or have tried to add one recently, and found that following the instructions for getting a Maps API Key (cryptic for many users at the best of times) are no longer working? This is because this summer Google made changes in its Maps API offerings. Now, an API key is definitely required (before it was not, not always anyway) and a credit card has to be on file in the Google account in order for the API key to validate.

This is not to say that you’ll be billed – everyone is given $200 in credit each month. Many sites will never come close to this limit (I calculated it as about 29,000 views on one client site, much more traffic than they currently receive) and you can also cap the visits so that it never goes over the usage limit. But still, requiring a credit card is an extra hassle for my clients who will have to set up their own billing in order to keep using Google Maps.

More information on this from WP Google Maps, my WordPress map plugin of choice.

Considering an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for your business site? FAQ pages are a great way to address the common questions you get about your products or services, and serve as a way to both educate users and help move them deeper into your site. Here’s a guide to 25 FAQ pages and the reasons why they’re so effective at what they do.

If you run an ecommerce site or are planning to, here’s a nice post comparing Stripe and Paypal, two of the most popular payment processors. I love Stripe – one of the reasons is it’s a lot easier for me to deal with Stripe reporting for my accounting than Paypal. But both have their pros and cons – read the post to learn more and make your own decision.

Finally… I’ve mentioned MemberPress before; it’s one of the easiest membership plugins I’ve used. Here’s a new post about MemberPress and why it might be all you need in a membership plugin. The article discusses the plugin’s features and why it stands out from other popular membership plugins.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.