Finally!
It took a ton of effort, but I finally have my very own Google Maps API key so I can embed maps using my own website’s identity. It’s a horribly convoluted process involving Google and their Developer Serivces. Plan to spend some serious time getting everything all set up. Suffice to say, if you can manage to get through all of it successfully, you certainly are a developer.
You must already have a Google account (Gmail) to begin with.
- You need to create a developer profile with Google
- You create a cloud services account with Google. This is where any billing for any pay services you’ve enabled. Google Maps API is free (for most uses), but they still make you create an account so they can bill you should you decide later to enable any paid services – wink, wink!
- You create a developer console project where Google organizes your service authorizations into projects. This is probably so you can identify where requests are coming from, for your own billing purposes. Since the Maps API is free, this isn’t useful for me, but it’s how things work.
- You then authorize certain Google APIs for that project (Google Maps)
- You create an API Key under that project you created so that your website can access the above services.
- Lastly you want to restrict access to this API Key to your own website, limiting it to just HTTP requests from your domain. This makes sure nobody is using your account but you.
Whew.
Anyway – here’s my hometown – just to show that everything is working….