Announcements

See tomorrow prices for WA Cities and Stations from 5:30pm AEST

WA motorists can now view the average daily fuel price for the following day after 5:30pm AEST, this is in addition to seeing individual fuel station’s tomorrow pricing.

Open up a WA City (e.g. Perth) after 5:30pm AEST for insights into tomorrow’s fuel pricing across Western Australia.

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Letters to the editor from December

At the start of each month we will be responding to positive and feedback collected from the past month. We rely on this feedback to better this site so please hit the feedback buttons at the bottom of each page where you think we can do better.

Here’s some of the feedback received in December.

You could make sure your information is accurate and that the people giving it to you are telling the truth. The information about Stawell Ararat and Horsham in Vic is wildly inaccurate. Ararat in particular is currently $1-59 and has been for some time. Stawell is $1-47 at the Shell and $1-50 at BP. I’m told by the Shell that Horsham are also $1-56, not the $1-47 you claim. […] I am getting so angry at current prices out here in western Vic that I am asking newspapers to investigate it. Your claimed prices for Ararat are 19 cents a litre less than actual prices which have been steady for a while now. The prices I have just quoted you are based on what I have just witnessed this morning and yesterday morning. Today is 29/1/2018.

There is no official daily or real-time retail fuel data source in Victoria which means we are using other public non-official sources which as you’ve guessed it aren’t always accurate. We are always on the eye out for better sources and will be reaching out to data providers to improve this.

Please see the links on the About page for how to contact your State Government, urge them to introduce a public fuel reporting system like other States including WA, NT, NSW and as of this year QLD.

“Last updated: 1 week ago” Information is not current.

This has been resolved in a recent site update, we show “Today’s pricing at …” if the latest prices are from the current day, if we do not have today’s prices or they are unavailable we display “Yesterday’s pricing at …” and outside that period then do not display the current pricing.

Good stop fuel and rest

We’ll be exploring how we can integrate Google Maps Place reviews into our Station template as good fuel stations deserve all the feedback they can get! In the interim click the Station address at the top of the page to open it in Google Maps or do a Google search for that Station and let them know! 🙂

Embed fuel prices in your WordPress website

Today we are proud to announce the availability of our free WordPress Plugin; FuelPrice Australia for WordPress

With our free WordPress Plugin site owners can embed fuel price Widgets from the FuelPrice Australia into the sidebar of their WordPress website.

Widgets can be assigned using the WordPress Customizer or the default Appearance > Widgets screen from the WordPress Administration.

We will be further developing this free Plugin in the coming weeks to support additional Widget types (e.g. Table Embed, Small Detailed Embed and Map Embed) as well as Suburb support and filtering options before building out Shortcode and Content Block support (new with WordPress 5.0).

It’s early day’s but we’re just happy to have a fuel price Plugin on w.org for Australian WordPress website owners! 🙂

FuelPrice Australia for WordPress

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What’s coming up for January

We’re now monitoring the daily averages of 100 Australian cities, supporting 14,796 suburbs, where possible doing hourly refreshing of prices at 6,467 fuel stations and for WA motorists display tomorrow’s price from 5:30pm.

The stragglers from past months will carry over to this month.

New features

  • [  ] Set the daily average price for towns/cities independantly where local station data is available (e.g. WA, NSW, QLD)
  • [x] Set the tomorrow average price for towns/cities in WA if station pricing data is available
  • [x] Release a free WordPress Plugin to embed local pricing details in WordPress sites using the FuelPrice Australia API
  • [x] Show the average daily fuel price on the State template
  • [  ] Show the average daily fuel price on the Fuel brand template
  • [  ] Finish the Small Detailed Embed and Map Embed Widgets
  • [  ] Add Suburb support to all Widgets
  • [..] Add reporting feature to City and Station templates to raise data issues
  • [  ] Overlay the current average daily price with current per-station prices to see what stations have priced their fuel types above/below regional averages
  • [  ] Add forecasting of tomorrow price and two days from now prices for cities based on known high and low historical prices
  • [  ] Add fuzzy matching for mispelled Suburbs and towns/cities in search
  • [  ] History controls for fuel stations to see last week, last month and all time matching the history controls of fuel types
  • [  ] AMP site support with Google Maps and Charts functionality
  • [..] Build out an API for localised fuel price data
  • [x] Add Progressive Web App support for mobile shortcuts on Android and Apple
  • [  ] Put the website through AppPresser and release to the Google Play and App Store marketplaces
  • [..] Add My Account facilities to manage your vehicle preferences, preferred fuel type and favourite stations and/or regions
  • [x] Voice search
  • [  ] Add site facilites to fuel stations from official sources (e.g. AdBlue availability, etc.)
  • [  ] Add fuel excerpt for Diesel and Premium Diesel fuel types using long-term pricing data (Diesel and Premium Diesel do not have typical weekly/monthly cycles)

Fixes

  • [  ] Identify and redirect duplicate fuel stations at the same location to the original station that is being maintained
  • [  ] Identify non-crowdfunded data sources for fuel stations in Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT
  • [  ] Improve the fuel price trigger detection linked to the low pricing e-mail notification
  • [..] Populate Google Maps Place ID for thousands of suburbs
  • [..] Populate Google Maps Place ID for thousands of outstanding stations
  • [  ] Validate Station price details by comparing against multiple data sources where possible
  • [  ] Re-introduce road safety messages with new Ad platform showing relevant messages based on known location
  • [x] Better CSS support for 1024×768 Desktop resolutions

Please keep hitting the feedback buttons and leave a comment where you identify problems with pages, feedback is taken seriously and is often actioned on the spot. 🙂

Changes for 23/12

Here’s a summary of changes since the last change announcement to FuelPrice Australia.

Added

  • Options Bloat widget to WP Admin
  • Overview of WP-CLI tasks to WP Admin (scheduled time, time taken, last run)
  • WP-CLI event logging
  • Notice about possible inaccurate prices for non-real time states (ACT, SA, TAS)
  • Maps styling to City template with reduced POI priority
  • State dropdown to Brands template
  • Letter styling for Suburbs template
  • Suburbs list separated by letter to Suburbs template
  • Search button to Search widget
  • IDDQD mode for logged-in Administrators
  • Styling of search result Stations
  • State dropdown to Brands template
  • Postcode, State, Lat and Long to Suburb Admin screen
  • State filtering to Suburbs list
  • WP-CLI task to refresh full list of Suburbs
  • Hourly refresh of QLD and NSW prices updates Last updated notice on City pages
  • Sitewide notice system for downtime/maintenance
  • Notice for Diesel/Premiem Diesel fuel types in some regional towns where corrupt data is being processed
  • CSS class to price colours
  • Body class for single State, Fuel type, Brand, Widget templates
  • Button styling
  • Peak fuel price detail in City excerpt
  • Improved styling for Station map markers with long names
  • Notice and amount of time lapsed for outdated Station price feeds
  • Dot styling to Charts fuel pricing
  • Button styling for desktop and mobile
  • Hourly check for broken site prices in QLD and NSW
  • WP-CLI commands for NSW and QLD hourly station price refresh
  • Hourly refresh of station prices in NSW
  • Styling for CNG and EV fuel types
  • Search widget to Sidebar under site logo
  • Automatic redirection from searches for states, state acronyms, city names and fuel types
  • Display of today/yesterday headers for prices from last day
  • Re-added feedback functionality
  • Small widget template
  • Views monitoring for widgets
  • API endpoints for get_cities, get_fuel_types, get_widget_types
  • Fuel Widget generator
  • Default fuel widget template
  • Graph Bar Embed fuel widget template
  • Styling for Fuel Widget generator
  • Report for QLD stations with broken pricing
  • Transient caching for widget templates
  • Notice for QLD stations with broken prices
  • Redirect to CIty on Frontpage where geolocated (first session visit)
  • FuelWatch data supplier notice for WA users
  • Default widget styling
  • %city% and %fuel_type Tags to Widget title and subtitles
  • Widget credits styling
  • Maintenance screen for scheduled downtime
  • Error screen for unscheduled downtime
  • Embeddable widgets section
  • Styling for embeddable widgets
  • Menu and page styling for the e85 fuel type
  • Support for marking parent ServiceStationID’s where duplicate Stations are found
  • Hourly QLD price check to WP-CLI
  • Corrupt QLD price check report (fuel price less than 80c)
    See %City% fuel prices button for mobile users on Frontpage
  • Fallback support for IP-based geolocation where location is not provided
  • Reporting for Brands without Pages
  • Reporting for Sites with broken/incomplete addresses

Fixed

  • Memory optimisations to reduce RAM footprint
  • Removed large Options from autoload
  • Replaced get_sites() and get_nearby_sites() with leaner solutions
  • Frontmap map not remember differing fuel type selections
  • Stying of Station title on desktop
  • Frontpage not showing different fuel type prices for Capital and Regional cities/towns
    Cheapest Brands not detecting more than a single cheapest Brand
  • Duplicate Suburb detail appearing in Station addresses
    Duplicate State detail appearing in Station addresses
  • Improved loading times by lazy loading Google Fonts
  • Long Station titles spilling outside of container on Station pages
  • Duplicate Suburb appearing in Station address
  • Y-axis labels not being shown on mobile
  • State name not being shown on Brand pages
  • Hiding corrupt station prices from search results
  • Improved title for Brand pages
  • Improved styling for Maps station markers
  • Hourly refresh causing empty day average pricing for stations in QLD
  • Update historical station graph hourly in QLD.
  • Turn off feedback on the Brand pages (conflicting with title styling)
  • Exclude QLD broken sites from station recommendations
  • Charts zoom not working on mobile
  • Excerpt showing 1 day instead of yesterday
  • Incorrect detection of pricing peak in new pricing cycles
  • Refresh Post modified date on City pages daily
  • Refresh Post modified date on City fuel type pages daily

Changed

  • Removed excess JS logging
  • Moved inline styling of prices to CSS class
  • Reduced size of header text on single Station and Brand pages
  • Hide heading on mobile for single City and State pages
    Hide unneccessary labels and hints for mobile users
  • Aligned Station/Brand favicon with header title text
  • Changed Frontpage header to H1
  • Increased space between links in link lists
  • Setting the fuel type on the Frontpage affects Widget links
  • Increased font size on Frontpage for detected Map marker

Changes for 04/12

Here’s a summary of changes since the last change announcement to FuelPrice Australia.

Added

  • Better detection of the start of peak cycles
  • QLD to the list of states with per-Station pricing
  • QLD stations
  • Styling to the fuel price summary for each City
  • Cheapest/highest styling to the price summary for each City during peak/low pricing events
  • Three days ago price to detailed fuel type information for each City
  • Four days ago price to detailed fuel type information for each City
  • Colour styling to nearby station pricing (red is more expensive, green is cheaper)
  • Price information for most expensive fuel brand on City template
  • Price information for cheapest fuel brand on City template
  • Randomizer to cheapest fuel station with same pricing on City template
  • Historical price information to fuel price summary generation
  • e85, CNG and EV as supported fuel types
  • Fuel brands to the Frontpage
  • Google Map to Brand subpage with Stations (e.g. Costco, Puma, etc.)
  • Station randomizer to City templates where multiple cheapest Stations are found
  • Link to Brand icons on City template
  • Link to view Brand page on Station template for Google referrals (e.g. show all Caltex stations)
  • Fuel type selector to Brand template
  • Road safety message styling
  • Error notice styling
  • Fuel type dropdown to the Frontpage
  • Real-world example for fuel tank for savings over >$5.00 for 50 litres
  • Friendly formatter for total days in conjunction to weeks (e.g. 3 weeks ago, 21 days)
  • Geolocation for the Frontpage
  • Cheapest and highest stations in a City by default
  • Option to view all Stations
  • Option to filter Stations by Brand on the City template
  • Detailed fuel price delivery date for QLD
  • Tomorrow price styling to WA Cities and Stations
  • Detection of start of new peak pricing cycle to City excerpt
  • Station pricing to QLD
  • DNRME notice to QLD pages
  • Notice on fuel type detail page to jump back to station pricing for supported States
  • QLD to WP-CLI commands
  • QLD actions to Admin actions
  • Stations, Brands and Fuel types integration for QLD

Fixed

  • Fatal PHP error for Stations without a Brand page URL
  • Duplicate Brand Pages being generated
  • Broken fuel types link
  • Hide PHP notices
  • Check if all cheapest sites have the same pricing and remove top brand
  • Clear the tomorrow price for WA when refreshing today’s price
  • Duplicate FuelWatch site name change notice appearing on City template
  • Styling of breadcrumb spacing on Brand subpage
  • Hide peak pricing information if only a day has passed and there is no change in price

Changed

  • Replaced large seconds count with DAY_IN_SECONDS

What’s coming up for December

We were a little ambitious for October’s goals, and must have been on another planet for last month’s goals so the stragglers will carry over to this month.

New features

  • [  ] Release a free WordPress Plugin to embed local pricing details in WordPress sites using the FuelPrice Australia API
  • [x] Associate all stations with their nearest supported city (e.g. Gull York Roadhouse would be Perth until York is added)
  • [  ] Overlay the current average daily price with current per-station prices to see what stations have priced their fuel types above/below regional averages
  • [x] Add data supplier recognition to stations (e.g. FuelWatch, FuelCheck, MyFuelNT, DNRME, etc.)
  • [  ] Add forecasting of tomorrow price and two days from now prices for cities based on known high and low historical prices
  • [x] Heat map pricing overlay for cities
  • [  ] History controls for fuel stations to see last week, last month and all time matching the history controls of fuel types
  • [  ] AMP site support with Google Maps and Charts functionality
  • [  ] Build out an API for localised fuel price data
  • [  ] Add Progressive Web App support for mobile shortcuts on Android and Apple
  • [  ] Put the website through AppPresser and release to the Google Play and App Store marketplaces
  • [x] Check for hourly fuel price changes in Queensland and supported states
  • [x] Add visual price bands to Cities with detailed Station pricing
  • [  ] Add My Account facilities to manage your vehicle preferences, preferred fuel type and favourite stations and/or regions.

Fixes

  • [  ] Populate Google Maps Place ID for 2473 outstanding stations
  • [  ] Validate Station price details by comparing against multiple data sources where possible

Detailed fuel pricing now available for Queensland motorists

We’re a go! The Queensland Government’s fuel price reporting trial is live and FuelPrice Australia is onboard!

We have integrated with Fuel Prices Queensland’s Data Publisher API to help Queensland motorists find the cheapest fuel prices in their area and support our goal of informing motorists as fuel prices approach the low of their local pricing cycles.

Work on the FuelPrice Australia site will continue during the week to refresh current fuel prices in Queensland on at least an hourly basis, this functionality will be announced as it happens.

Nice one Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy!

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Queensland fuel price reporting trial

FuelPrice Australia has signed up as a data publisher to participate in Queensland’s first fuel price reporting trial!

We’re awaiting acceptance of our application, API documentation and access keys before we can dive in and see what’s possible before the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy flick the switch next month. 🙂

What’s coming up for November

Yeah we were a little ambitious for last month’s goals so the stragglers will carry over to this month.

New features

  • [  ] Associate all stations with their nearest supported city (e.g. Gull York Roadhouse would be Perth until York is added)
  • [  ] Overlaying the current average daily price with current per-station prices to see what stations have priced their fuel types above/below regional averages
  • [x] Adding tomorrow price for Western Australia based on known prices as available
  • [x] Adding data supplier recognition to stations (e.g. FuelWatch, FuelCheck, MyFuelNT, etc.)
  • [  ] Adding forecasting of tomorrow price and two days from now prices for cities based on known high and low historical prices
  • [x] Heat map pricing overlay for cities
  • [  ] History controls for fuel stations to see last week, last month and all time matching the history controls of fuel types
  • [x] Add Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a fuel type where offered
  • [  ] AMP site support with Google Maps and Charts functionality
  • [  ] Build out an API for localised fuel price data
  • [  ] Add Progressive Web App support for mobile shortcuts on Android and Apple
  • [  ] Put the website through AppPresser and release to the Google Play and App Store marketplaces
  • [x] Add visual price bands to Cities with detailed Station pricing

Fixes

  • [  ] Populate Google Maps Place ID for 379 outstanding stations
  • [  ] Validate Station price details by comparing against multiple data sources where possible
  • [x] Fix the last peak date being a day behind
  • [x] Validate yesterday and two days ago prices for Cities and Stations by checking the fuel history (needed for future fuel price predictions)