Store Locator Plus® was updated today with store category management improvements. Users reported an issue where the could not disassociate all store categories from a location. Assigning a store to a new category worked as expected, as did changing the category assigned to a location. The issue only appeared when trying to remove all category associates from a location.
Today’s updates resolves that issue and users can now disconnect all category references from a location.
The issue impacts both SaaS platform and WordPress plugin users.
WordPress plugin users will need to upgrade to the latest version of the Power plugin to get the store category management improvements. Users with a SaaS subscription have been automatically updated to the improved experience.
Another day, another update — this time to fix assigning categories to locations. For users of our Professional level service there was an interesting bug that would stop location category icons from showing up on the main list of locations in the admin panel. It also had the affect of not checking of the proper assigned categories when editing a location; This made it look like a location was not assigned to any categories which was not always the case.
To make things more interesting, this bug only appeared if you turned off the Show Category Icons setting under Settings | Results. By default this setting is on, so most users did not notice the bug. For those that turn that setting off the category icons and names went away on the location list like the one below. It also meant the edit location form was not checking the matching categories.
Location category display on location listings.
This issue has been resolved.
For WordPress users , you will need to upgrade to the Power add on version 2301.11.X to see this bug fix. For our SaaS platform users, the update will go online this week — no further action is necessary.
Store Locator Plus® was updated with a small, but important, change to how location map markers are displayed when users are interacting with the category selector. Users of the Professional level offering have the ability to create location categories. Locations can belong to more than one category, for instance a location can be both a “Retail” location and a “Service” location. Some locations will be only “Retail”.
Category Map Markers
Each location category can also be assigned a unique map marker. All yellow map markers are retail, and blue markers are for service. For those locations where they offer both retail and service , Store Locator Plus® would always display the yellow map marker based on the default “marker is the first category, chosen by alphabetical order”.
While there are some caveats to this general rule, there were some confusing results. If you created a map with a category filter that allowed users to pick “either retail” or “service” locations and the user selected “service” they could see a map with both yellow and blue markers. How is that happening when all service locations are supposed to be showing blue markers?
The answer — those dual-purpose locations that are in both the retail and service category. Prior to the late-September update, the marker for the location would ALWAYS pick from the “highest ranked” category which would default to “retail” by the alphabetical rule noted above. All locations that were service only would be displayed alongside a handful or retail-and-service locations.
Multiple Categories Marker Change
In the late-September update that went online today, IF a user is filtering the list of locations by a SINGLE category, the map marker that is displayed will be filtered as well — in essence filtering out the yellow “retail” marker if the user has elected “show only service location” with the blue marker. With this update only blue markers will appear.
