More than 2m people use website that shows lockdown distance limits

More than 2.1 million people have used a website that was hastily put together at the start of the lockdown to show how far people could roam from home.

The 2kfromhome website was built by David Bolger on March 27th, the same evening the Government announced a lockdown and restrictions of movements due to the Covid-19 crisis.

Mr Bolger of Co Wexford-based software company Devhaus, subsequently updated the tool to adjust it for the loosening of exercise restrictions to 5km. It has now been updated again for a expected further widening of the radius to 20km next week.

More than 600,000 Irish people used the sites in the five days surrounding the loosening of restrictions to 5km and the site’s creators say they are now expecting another massive surge in users.

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The initial website was built for family and friends and hosted on a small Devhaus project server. Due to the high traffic levels however, Devhaus migrated it to a larger server and eventually to Cloud Flare to scale content delivery. The site remained live throughout these transitions.

The new update will allow users to place two pins on a map to show the overlapping 20km areas where they can meet others for socially distanced visits or exercise.

Guidelines

“We’re delighted that the site is used so much as to us it says that Irish people are adhering to guidelines and are seeking out information so they are fully informed about where they can travel to,” said Joanne O’Grady, managing director at Devhaus.

The website is free to use although there is a ‘buy us a coffee’ donation button included to ensure the creators have enough caffeine in their systems to keep it up and running.

While it has largely been Irish people consulting the site, users in France, Spain and South Africa have also been in touch to ask the developers to build similar sites for their respective countries.

The site uses Open Street Maps and Leaflet for the mapping while search is provided by Algolia Places.