News | Store Locator Plus®

August ’26 Locator Style Refresh

Posted by lcleveland in Map Software, Release Notes, SaaS, Store Locator Plus

We’ve been working on refreshing the existing Locator Styles as part of our 2026 user interface design refresh. Locator Styles provide preset user interface designs for the public-facing side of Store Locator Plus®. The styles provide an easy way to generate a new look for what your customers see on your website when looking for places you sell your wares or provide services.

Our Locator Styles worked well when they were crafted five or six years ago, but they need a refresh to meet today’s interface design standards. We’ve started working through our catalog of pre-defined styles with refreshes that work better with modern themes on WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Shopify and other web presence solutions. The first round of refreshes it meant to upgrade the most popular styles while provide as much backwards compatibility with older web themes.

The good news it that the updated styles are not implemented automatically even if your Store Locator Plus® installation is using one of the Locator Styles we have updated. To try out the revised version of a style you need to select a new style and activate it via the Style Manager in Store Locator Plus® or reload the style if it is already active on your site. With activating a new style or reloading the current style no changes will be made to your installation.

Our revisions for early August 2026 include the Default, Bobbitt, and Bennet locator styles. These updates are now online for most users.

Default Locator Style

The Default locator style is the style that is the default layout everyone starts with. This is designed to change multiple settings back to their initial configuration and provide generic styling that inherits or works alongside multiple web presence themes.

This is the basic layout for Store Locator Plus®. It allows default browser and website themes to dictate the element styling. It has settings that take advantage of Enterprise and Professional level features.

Subscription	Settings Changed
Advanced	CSS settings, General locator layout Search layout, Search category dropdown style Results layout Map layout, Map info bubble layout
Professional	plus… Location categories Search form style, Search by name, Category selection Results header, Prevent result listing wrap, Paginate results, Show country hours and phone, Category icons on results Map styling, hide home marker, map width, map height
Enterprise	plus… Search box placeholder text Map cluster markers, Google map style, map loading indicator

Bennett Locator Style

The Bennett locator style was created years ago for a client with a specific user interface design requested to blend with their website.

Search: Designed to search by category, city, state, tags or the dealer name versus the standard address or zip centric search.
Presents the category options as clickable buttons. City and State selectors are via a drop down selection. Tag search and dealer name is a text input.
Displays a reset search button to back to the original search with no filters.

Results: Presented as a 4-column design with name, country, phone, and website as the primary output.
Gray highlight on hover over location.
Light yellow highlight for featured locations.

This theme has been designed to work best with Enterprise subscriptions as it uses cluster markers, table layouts, and scroll map into view features. Category buttons, column result layouts, and other elements require Professional or Enterprise subscriptions.

Bobbitt Locator Style

The Bobbitt style was another customer request.

A yellow color scheme with a simplified search interface.
Does NOT show an address search.
Focus is on searching by name (if enabled), tags, categories, city, and state.

Results layout shows only the name, address and directions.

Location details are in the map info bubble.

This theme has been designed to work best with Enterprise subscriptions as it uses category search, tag search, city search, and state search features.

More updates are planned for our two-dozen-plus locator styles throughout the remainder of the year. We are also working on creating more advanced interactive styles that go beyond simple layout and styling. Check the Style menu and click the “New…Old” button on the top right of the style stack to see what updates we’ve released most recently.

Note: WordPress users will want to backup their installation to ensure they can recover any settings that may be changed when trying out new styles. SaaS users can review the Settings History to review what was changed and copy settings back as needed. We are working on a “restore previous setting” feature in Settings History to make this easier in the future. Contact us if you need assistance restoring your SaaS styling.

Store Locator Plus® July 2026 Updates: Faster Location Management and Cleaner Admin Tools

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, Release Notes, SaaS, Store Locator, Store Locator Plus

Work continues to modernize the Store Locator Plus® user experience. The latest round of updates focused primarily on the Location Management table header. Location management updates include an improved tab bar along with improved bulk actions, filter, and search components.

These updates were made in preparation for a complete rework of the locations management table. The reworked table will significantly improve location searches, filters, and other tools that assist our clients with location lists that include hundreds or thousands of locations. Those releases are expected in our Summer 2026 update.

Manage Location Interface Updates

July 2026 location management action bar UX improvements (all users).

The latest Store Locator Plus® updates continue the work of modernizing the location management experience for SaaS customers and WordPress plugin users. This release window focused on the Manage Locations screen, especially the tools store owners use every day: bulk actions, search, filters, category updates, import/export workflows, and clearer in-admin feedback.

The updated tag locations modal (Professional and Enterprise users).

For customers with large location directories, the biggest improvement is a more responsive and easier-to-use admin workflow. The location list controls are being moved into the newer React-based interface, giving the page a cleaner layout while preserving the existing Store Locator Plus behavior that site owners already rely on.

SaaS Updates

The hosted Store Locator Plus® dashboard received shared interface updates that improve button styling and visual consistency across React-based admin screens. These refinements help keep action buttons readable and consistent even on screens that still include older WordPress admin styling.

The SaaS dashboard components were rebuilt against the updated shared interface library. This is mostly behind-the-scenes work, but it supports a more consistent customer dashboard as more account, profile, and location management screens move to the newer interface framework.

Testing and development environments were also updated for newer WordPress compatibility, helping keep the hosted platform aligned with upcoming WordPress changes.

WordPress Plugin Updates

The Store Locator Plus® base plugin updates in this window focused heavily on the Manage Locations screen. The bulk actions, search box, and location filter controls have moved into React-based components while still using the existing backend processing paths. That keeps the customer-facing behavior stable while improving the admin interface.

The Power add-on was updated to work with the new React location management controls. Location filters, import processing, export behavior, hosted CSV options, and category-related actions were adjusted so they continue to work cleanly with the updated admin layout.

The Experience add-on received compatibility updates for the revised bulk action wording and location management controls.

The Premier add-on received a settings message clarification, making the Premier Options guidance easier to understand in the WordPress admin.

For WordPress plugin users, the relevant versions from this release window are Store Locator Plus® 2607.11.01, Power 2607.11.01, Experience 2607.04.01, and Premier 2606.26.01. The Store Locator Plus® base plugin now requires PHP 8.2 or newer.

Admin and Interface Refinements

The Manage Locations screen has a cleaner action bar with modernized bulk action controls. Tagging and categorizing locations now use clearer modal and drawer interfaces, with improved action button layout and better feedback while processing.

Search has been moved into the new header area and continues to use the established Store Locator Plus search behavior. This keeps the workflow familiar while reducing older PHP-generated interface code.

The updated location filter notification interface.

Filters now use a slide-out drawer and active filter indicators. When a filter is applied, the active filter state is shown more clearly so administrators can see what is limiting the current list. Property filters can show details such as name, ZIP/postal code, state, country, and category selections.

The updated location filter interface (Professional and Enterprise accounts).

Filtered searches that return no matching locations now keep the action bar available. This is important because it lets administrators adjust or clear filters instead of getting stuck on an empty result view.

Bulk action progress feedback has also been improved. Actions now show clearer processing indicators, and apply buttons are disabled when they cannot safely act on the current result set.

Fixes and Stability Improvements

Several older location management scripts and unused admin UI paths were removed after the new React controls replaced them. This reduces duplicate logic and lowers the chance of old interface code interfering with current behavior.

Power import handling was updated so import-related scripts load when the Locations tab is available, not only after a specific tab click. This makes import workflows more reliable in the updated admin interface.

A Power categorization issue that could interfere with other JavaScript on the Manage Locations screen was fixed.

The updated Categorize locations interface (Professional and Enterprise accounts).

Unused JavaScript libraries and older table sorting assets were removed from Power where WordPress core or the newer interface no longer needs them.

The Store Locator Plus® base plugin and related add-ons received maintenance cleanup, including PHP compatibility updates, PSR-12 cleanup, dependency simplification, and removal of unused generated assets.

What You Need To Do

Store Locator Plus® SaaS customers do not need to install anything. The hosted service is updated automatically.

WordPress plugin users should update the Store Locator Plus® base plugin and any active add-ons together. If you use Power, Experience, or Premier, update those add-ons at the same time as the base plugin to keep the Manage Locations tools aligned.

Before updating a production WordPress site, confirm that your hosting account is running PHP 8.2 or newer. If your site is still on an older PHP version, update PHP first or ask your hosting provider to move the site to a current PHP release.

As always, test updates on a staging copy first if your site has custom integrations, large location imports, or custom admin workflows.

New Map Views Report

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, Store Locator, Store Locator Plus

Our June 2026 update to the Store Locator Plus® SaaS platform includes our first foray into reporting and graphs. It is a very small step in that direction, but an important step that implements the next iteration of our move toward modern React-based user interfaces throughout our product line up. Our intention is to continue to capture more data about YOUR customer interactions with the Store Locator Plus® maps and expose that data to you in order to provide additional insight for your business.

Now that we have a functional framework for updating the dashboard interfaces we can turn our attention to improving our service in other vectors, starting with customer insight reporting. In the past customer interaction reporting was available to our Professional and Enterprise plans only. Moving forward we will continue to add access to interaction metrics for all SaaS customers.

To access the new views report , login to your SaaS account via https://dashboard.storelocatorplus.com/ and go to My Profile. Under My Profile click on Site Info. Look for the View History button in the Map Views card on the dashboard.

The new report shows a monthly trend of map views.

Columns marked with red highlight months where your map views exceed your plan limit.
The dashed line shows your plan limit.
Beneath the graph is a data table showing the total views, overage (if any) and additional charges for the SaaS service if you are over your limit.

With the initial implementation we are estimating map views based on historical data. Some accounts will not have data before January 2026. Starting in June 2026 the map views are being tracked more closely and will represent actual views. Past data would sometimes under-report views due to inconsistent card processing at Stripe which triggers the map view count on the day your subscription renews.

We will continue to refine the data collection and reporting process and will have updated versions of this report as well as new features coming out soon. Please share your thoughts and feedback as well as new feature requests via the Contact Us form on your Store Locator Plus® dashboard.

If you are still managing your own Store Locator Plus® location maps and directories with our WordPress plugin collection, ask us how you can migrate to the SaaS version and take advantage of the new metric reports and map interfaces we have planned.