The maps in the Encyclopedia should be working again, after a few days of being blank.
It would be reassuring if I knew why they stopped working but I’m stumped. The map tiles (the square graphics that make up the map’s background graphics of streets, rivers, etc.) are provided by Mapbox which has a free level of access. But these stopped loading, with errors saying “403 Forbidden”. There was nothing in my account at Mapbox to suggest anything was wrong, and we were well within the generous limits they allow.
In the end I tried changing the access token – a long string of characters that links the maps on this site to my account on Mapbox – and that seems to have fixed things. I have no idea why, or what the issue was, but I guess that’s all fine.
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Second Reading
Phil Gyford • Link
For anyone following along at home... it turns out that Mapbox had updated how they do things and although the maps were now working again, they'd have stopped on November 1st, when the "old way" of defining the style of the map stopped working.
In the end it required downloading a small update to some of the map-generating code and changing the name of the style of map we use. So, it should now continue working.