So a sneak peak of some prototype work I’m doing.
I’m going to be looking at giving early access to this for current and recent backers for a period (regardless of sponsorship level)
Going forward I have will be offering early access to some new features from $7/month for individual sponsors/small communities and $40/month for business.
Initial invites to early access have just gone out for current sponsors. I’ll widen this to past sponsors soon and this access will remain for a period, after which maintaining a minimum level of sponsorship will be required.
Sponsor list is reviewed daily, so please consider sponsoring me if you are keen to use the latest features on Locations and/or generally keen to support my work.
Backers will always get fixes first.
Features will be migrated to the public repo on a case by case basis and after a delay …
I’ve just been implementing the awesome Automated User Location Determination, which involves configuring Maxmind properly. This was on a new instance.
The new app.yml is lovely and lean, but doesn’t include the Maxmind ENV variables as a comment any more.
If this is to be more accessible to less confident self-hosting sysadmins, we might need a clear explainer - and to point them to this topic:
An unwanted (by me anyway) link to the map pops up on the sidebar, and this isn’t governed by any settings. I’ve hidden it thus:
// hide the users map link
.sidebar-sections li[data-list-item-name="users map"] {
display: none;
}
Perhaps it is time to deprecate both this and the (setting controlled) topic map link? These can now easily be added via the standard UI if the admin wishes to have them.
Links the admin adds to the sidebar are currently not translatable. So for a community where users might prefer different interface languages, the plugin adding the link to the sidebar provides the option to translate and display them in multiple languages.
I noticed that I cannot enable geolocation for topics in a category.
It doesn’t offer to save the changes 
(I’m on version 2026.5.0-latest)
This should be fixed now.
The fix should be deployed to Early Access and Public versions of the repo, together with a whole host of compatibility fixes.
As a part of that work I’ve increased the difference between the versions.
The Early Access version exposed to sufficiently privileged Sponsors has the following features which the public version of Locations currently lacks:
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Users-map globe | Adds an interactive 3D globe view for the Users Map, with avatars placed by location, drag/touch rotation, zoom, reset, search focus, user-card clicks, and always-on bump mapping. |
| Globe screen saver | Optional experimental idle screen saver showing a rotating 3D globe with user avatars below the header. |
| Enhanced users-map filters | Adds controls for result limit, search type, search term, and group filtering on the Users Map. |
| Nearby topic filter | Adds a nearby topic-list filter based on distance from the current user’s location. |
| IP-based user location lookup | Automatically estimates and stores user locations from IP data, with configurable trigger mode, granularity, cooldown, GeoNames resolution, skip-if-existing behavior, and debug logging. |
This means the maintained public version has been slightly downgraded. I’m afraid that’s necessary to ensure my sponsors get sufficient benefit.
If you would like these extra features, consider sponsoring me and making sure you go for a monthly tier which includes Early Access. Sponsoring me at the right tier will give you access to the Early Access version within 24 hours.
Thanks @merefield for your speed 
.
