Location Page Listings Enhanced

Posted by lcleveland in Store Locator Plus, WordPress, WPSLP

One of the few features that is not currently available for our MySLP SaaS users is the dynamic location details pages that are hosted on WordPress sites. Users that employ the Pages feature of the Power add on can link the web links for locations shown in the locator to a SEO friendly details page hosted on the website for every location in the database.

Another important feature of the Pages interface is the ability to list all pages that have been generated in a directory format via the [slp_pages] shortcode. This list provides an easy way to show locations without requiring site visitors interact with the map interface.

More Page Listing Controls

With the 4.9.14 release of the WordPress plugins, the Power add on now provides even more control over the page listings. When using the default “full listing” style, which shows the entire page template one-after-another, there are some new options available.

Hide The Map

Hide the map, is one such option. Most users opt to show a map showing where the business is when a user looks at the details page. However, loading a dozen maps stack one on top of another on a page listing slows down page rendering. The new no_map attribute allows you to turn the map on or off as needed.

Custom CSS Classes

In prior releases web designers could style the layouts for the page listings by adding custom CSS to their WordPress theme and reference the Store Locator Plus specific classes that wrap the page list as well as the SLP classes that wrap each individual page entry.

In the Power 4.9.14 release users can now replace the previously “hard-coded” Store Locator Plus classes used with these HTML elements with their own class names. This can be especially useful when using WordPress themes that are built on a standard library such as the common 12-column Grid Layouts in Foundation, Vuetify, and Bootstrap. That means you can let the theme’s default row and column controls manage the layout for the page listings instead of writing tedious responsive CSS rule stacks just for Store Locator Plus.

Even better – you can set these CSS classes with [slp_pages] attributes.

Like our recent location editor update, this is one more step on our journey toward moving Store Locator Plus toward modern web design standards.

We’re already using this on a couple of projects and think you’ll like the new implementation.

Locator Style Updates

Posted by lcleveland in MySLP SaaS, Squarespace, Store Locator Plus, Web Presence, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, WPSLP

A built-in feature on all Store Locator Plus products from the free WPSLP downloadable plugin to the fully managed MySLP service is one-click deployment of new interface styles. Our locator Style Gallery server is updated form time-time-time with new styles you can try as well as tweaks to existing styles.

Today’s Updates

We cleaned up the styling for the hours that are displayed in the results listing , placing them on their own line in the results output. This update is available to all MySLP and WPSLP users.

We also cleaned up the Directory Landing Page for users that employ the directory feature for WPSLP Power.

The change is immediately available to the following locator styles:

Updating Styles

Don’t worry, if you selected a locator style already it will not change even if we update your selected style on our server. If you want to update your selected style to or latest version you must select a different style from the plugin gallery first, then re-select the style you were using.

Keep in mind that some styles in our Style Gallery will change your locator settings. The styles that change settings clearly note that they will do so in the description. Read the descriptions before clicking that “Activate” button.

How To Select A New Style

For MySLP start from Advanced Options in your dashboard.

For WPSLP start from Store Locator Plus on your admin login.

Go to Settings > View

In the Appearance section you will see a list of available styles from our Style Gallery.

Hover over the bottom edge of the “card” showing the style information and click the Select button when it appears.

How To Update Your Style

Follow the above steps and start by selecting a locator style that you are not currently using.

Follow the above steps and re-select the style you were using originally. This will re-load the style and the settings from our gallery server.

Power 4.9.1 Improves Location Import

Posted by lcleveland in MySLP SaaS, Squarespace, Web Presence, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, WPSLP

Store Locator Plus Power 4.9.1 improves location imports. It is available for WordPress now and will be updated in our end-of-year release for MySLP users. Here it what was patched and improved.

All Users (MySLP and WPSLP)

Address 2 column on CSV import files was incorrectly being mapped to the address field. This has been resolved.

The location import processing has vastly improved progress indicators on the import sub tab. Check them out.

Power 4.9.2 Import Processing Progress Bar

WordPress Specific

Store Pages custom post types , that are included with Power, correctly registers with WordPress 4.9 showing the sidebar menu.

Power has been updated to work on servers running PHP 5.3. You really should upgrade to PHP 5.6 if you value site security, not too mention performance. PHP 5.3 has been out-of-date for several years now. Actually jump right to PHP 7 if you can.

General Notes

Import and Basic Auth

The new import process requires that your site be able to run WP Cron. Some hosts and site admins turn that off for “security reasons”, but there is limited-if-any security risk with that process. Not running it not only will prevent the new imports from running but stops lots of other things from working in WordPress; like automated updates.

If your site is using basic authentication, you’ll know if it is, the import processor cannot start the second (reading the CSV file) and third stages (geocoding locations) automatically. You’ll need to be logged in as an authorized user and surf to your website/wp-cron.php to kick things off. Some development and staging sites use basic authentication to prevent a casual web surfer or search bot from accessing a site they are working on.

Marker Not Found Notice On Settings Page

If you are seeing “marker not found” notifications when going to your Settings tab in SLP, this could be an obvious indication that basic auth is running on your site. Our marker-testing uses the built-in WordPress “get this web thing” function which access something, like your marker URL , as if it is a “Joe Public” web user just surfing the web WITHOUT typing in special access codes or passwords. As a side note, if you are seeing that notification there is a good chance that someone visiting your site with a browser you’ve not tested yet is getting a map with no markers on it.

Tag Based Location Searches

No, we’ve not completely fixed the TAG search in this release. The tag searching is better, but still not 100%. We are actively chasing down that bug and a few others for the SLP 4.9.2 + Power 4.9.2 release.

Other Updates

We are working on getting Premier to run on PHP 5.3 servers (you ARE going to upgrade to PHP 5.6, right?) along with some other minor patches.

If you have issues please post in the forum (this shows up in our dev teams Slack channel) or Contact Us via email. If using the forum, please start your own thread if you are sharing information about your site and want help debugging. Include a link to your locator page and copy the content of your plugin environment (for WPSLP users) or profile (MySLP users).

Keep in mind that if you updated OTHER THINGS like WordPress, another plugin, or a theme… those can break Store Locator Plus. SLP is the most visible thing you’ll see if your JavaScript breaks as the search form stops working. Nobody usually notices a slide-out menu not sliding out but a search for locations is front-and-center. Check your browser’s developer tools and look in the console for error messages. We’ve had several sites update things like their them which was missing a library, such as Lightbox, that breaks JavaScript and stops the locator from running.