Editing Categories and Location Import/Export

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

During the month of June we have been working on several patches for both Store Locator Plus® SaaS platform and WordPress plugin users. We have also performed multiple tweaks to improve performance including leveraging some PHP 8 specific performance tweaks.

SaaS User Editing Categories

All SaaS users received an updated earlier this week patching the category edit functionality. Buried deep in the new settings history tracker was an issue that prevented categories from being edited and saved after they were created. 

Since our SaaS platform still runs most of the core features through the old-school WordPress core code it inherits a lot of garbage including the very outdated category editor (we are hoping to replace that someday with a modern React style editor). Part of the garbage that is inherited with that 15-year-old janky interface is the fact that the only way to add extended attributes to categories, like our custom map markers and icons, is to store the extra metadata in the WordPress options table. It just so happens that is the MAIN settings storage area.

We missed that when adding our settings history feature to the SaaS plugin. Thus, any time a user saved their category updates for their locations the WordPress engine would fire the “hey, we just saved some settings” trigger. Our code was expecting actual settings not category data and didn’t handle it well.

That has been patched and is already deployed for all SaaS users.

Read more: Editing Categories and Location Import/Export

Location Import/Export

Users that have installed the Power add for WordPress may have issues importing and exporting locations. After a week of tracking down this issue, which only happens on SOME WordPress sites, we have found that the WordPress user settings for administrators can be corrupted. This causes the admin interface to not load properly. That causes the JavaScript for the Power add on (and likely lots of other plugins, not just ours) to not be loaded.

This is NOT corruption caused by our plugin code. We are not sure what triggers it, but in some case a WordPress install will start thinking it is a “multisite” install and attaches either the network_admin or user_admin attribute to a logged in user session. When that happens the “do this when an administrator is on the Store Locator Plus® admin pages” does not fire. 

What did we do to fix this? In our test installations where we could reproduce the problem we went to our administrator user profile , changed the website URL (you can change ANY data — might be a good time to update your passwords) and saved. After we re-saved our user profile with a new website URL or password everything came back as expected.

How did the user admin meta get out-of-whack? We may never know.

Bottom line, if you location imports or exports are broken try re-saving your user profile in WordPress.

This issue does NOT impact SaaS users.

Post image by Lance Cleveland

WordPress Store Locations SaaS

Posted by lcleveland in Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Store Locator, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

Some of our long-time WordPress plugin customers have decide to reduce their workload and customer maintenance overhead by migrating to the MySLP service.  Here are your answers to some of the most common questions that have come up during the process.

How Do I Connect MySLP To The Plugin?

The short answer: You don’t.  

The MySLP service is a self-contained application that installs on your WordPress site , or any site builder that supports JavaScript, with a simple JavaScript embed.    It does not require the Store Locator Plus plugins to be installed on the WordPress site.

In fact, if you are now using MySLP you should delete any of the Store Locator Plus plugins you have installed on your WordPress site.    Make sure you’ve downloaded your locations and copied any settings you wish to take to MySLP beforehand.   While on that topic, a good site administrator will delete any obsolte and unused plugins from a WordPress site.  Deactivated plugins are still available for hackers to exploit.

If There Is No Plugin How Do I Use It?

To manage the locations and settings you will login to your MySLP Dashboard.

When you are ready to deploy the map you can go to any page or post on the site and paste the embed code you copied from your MySLP dashboard.    Make sure you are viewing the page/post editor in text mode first, then paste the JavaScript embed where you want the map to appear on the page.

How Do I Get The Locations Into MySLP?

If you are migrating an existing site you will want to export locations from the WordPress install with the Power add on BEFORE deactivating and deleting the WPSLP plugins.

Go to the Locations tab in Store Locator Plus and select “Export, Hosted” or “Export, Download” from the download menu then click the To All portion of the Apply To All button.

Make sure you’ve copied your settings to your new MySLP account as well.

Once you have your locations CSV file go to your MySLP Dashboard account and look for the Locations Import tab under Advanced Options.   Import is available on Power or higher level accounts.   You can upgrade or downgrade service to/from the Advanced level as needed to get the import feature during the migration process.

On a related note, we are working on an “Import From A WPSLP Install” feature for MySLP that will bring over locations directly without the manual import/export process.

How Many Sites Can Use My Map?

Your MySLP account can deploy the locator on as many sites and mobile apps as you need.   Each deployment will share the same map settings and location list which can be useful for building SEO content pages while retaining a consistent location listing between the sites and pages.