Store Locator Plus® has two settings related to how many locations are returned when displaying a map. The first setting “Number To Show Initially” is the setting that determines how many locations will be shown when the map first renders. The locations are typically the first n-locations that are closest to the center point of the map unless other setting are adjusted to do something different. The second is the “Number To Show” after a search. This is the maximum number of locations that will be returned when a user enters and address and searches for locations.
Somewhere along the way the location search results settings got muddled and often the number of locations to be shown after a search was ignored. Instead the “Number To Show Initially” was used for both settings. We are not sure exactly when the behavior changed, likely during a huge thousand-lines-of-code update forced upon us by the folks at the WordPress Plugin Directory in the name of “security patches” (don’t even get me started on that topic). Regardless, an attentive user reported the problem along with the steps to reproduce the errant behavior. We were able to issue a patch for that issue and roll it into our March 2025 update on the SaaS platform (plugin users are also impacted).
Non-Embedded Locator Map Preview
Included in the v2503.06 Store Locator Plus® update is our initial version of the locator map test page. We intend to refine this feature in future updates, but felt the initial functionality was worth pushing out in this release. While the Generate Embed functionality of the SaaS platform provides the tools needed to obtain the JavaScript code you will need to place the locator map on any website, it still lives within the administrative dashboard of the Store Locator Plus® SaaS service. That means that it will inherit some basic CSS rules and other element such as display panel width limitations that may not be present on a typical web page.
The sample locator map preview page is available to any user after they have logged into their SaaS account. This page is a simplified HTML page hosted on the website with a basic header and footer with a pure JavaScript implementation of the embed code. This allows users to have a better preview of a full width implementation of the locator map with the styles and settings they have configured.
You can find the link to the preview page under the Profile section of your account next to the MySLP Site label.
Other Updates
In addition to the locator search results update, a number of other minor patches and updates are included in the 2503.06 release including:
- Retrieval of the map marker tooltip setting now returns the proper value on the front end user interface.
- Some Enterprise level accounts were not seeing all of the features , especially the Premier level options such as:
- Territories and Boundaries for restricting search results to a geometric region.
- Search On Map Move to update location listing result when a user drags the map.
- Cluster Map Markers that will group together multiple locations that appear visually close to each other into a single circular marker with the count of locations underneath. Users can zoom in to break apart the cluster into the individual locations.
- Adding extended Google Maps UI elements to the map display including things like the zoom, street view, and scale interface elements.
- Pagination of location lists on the results listing.
- Phone number extension dialer options for listings that include extended phone numbers.
- Multiple label and header element options for search, results and individual location listing.
These updates are now online with the latest update of the Store Locator Plus® SaaS platform.
WordPress plugin users will need to manually download and install the latest update files to get these patches on their WordPress installations. WordPress plugin users should perform a full backup of their site before installing the plugin updates and know how to restore that backup should things stop working as expected.
