News

Location Page Listings Enhanced

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.

New Pages CSS Class Overrides

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.

 

New Edit Locations Interface

You may have noticed that the admin interface for Store Locator Plus has been changing during the past few releases.

Last month My Store Locator Plus users noticed that the Advanced Settings menu has been renamed “Store Locator Plus”.   This has been done as we work toward improving and consolidating our documentation as well as functionality between the WordPress plugin and the fully managed locator service.

This month our Store Locator Plus users , whether using the WordPress plugins or MySLP service will notice that the add and edit locations page looks a bit different.   This is part of today’s 4.9.14 update for WordPress and 18.04 update for MySLP.

Store Locator Settings

Store Locator Plus for WordPress users should skip version 4.9.11 of the base plugin (Store Locator Plus) update.  Installing that release will reset some settings for the plugin including the layout settings for users that have the Experience add on.

The problem has been located and is patched in the 4.9.12 release that was published moments ago.

Full Restore

If you updated to 4.9.11 you will need to restore your SLP settings from a backup of the site made prior to the SLP 4.9.11 update.

Selective Restore of Settings

Experienced users can restore the following two entries from the wp_options table from a prior backup of the site if you do not wish to do a full site restore:

option_names: csl-slplus-options and csl-slplus-options_nojs

If you are not sure how to restore select options from the wp_options table your best alternative is a standard full site restore.

No locations are lost/changed during this process. They are stored in a separate location.

For Users With No Custom Layouts

If you updated to 4.9.11 of Store Locator Plus but are not using the Experience add on you may be able to update to SLP 4.9.12 and restore standard styling by doing to Settings > View > Gallery Styles and selecting one of our default styles for your site.  If you were using the Default style select Default With Font Tweaks , activate it, then select Default to re-load the layout controls from our servers.

MySLP Managed Service

Most users were not impacted by this bug.  The select few users there were impacted by the 18.0320 update last week have had their prior settings restored.

If you are using MySLP and think your settings were changed and your account was not reset, please let us know within 30 days so we can manually recover your prior settings.