Store Locator Plus® Updates On The Way

Posted by lcleveland in Store Locator Plus

Store Locator Plus® recently hired a new developer to help work on both front end and back end code.  It is part of a renewed focus on providing routine monthly updates to the Store Locator Plus® platform.    Changes will roll out slowly at first, with a focus on the WordPress plugins as our new development team learns the ins-and-outs of the platform.   Our end goal is to vastly improve the platform with several key objectives in sight — to improve overall security, to improve the performance, and most importantly to improve the user experience.

Store Locator Plus® 5.7 was recently released to the WordPress community with several key security updates.   These updates will help ensure proper data security and integrity on sites that run the standalone WordPress plugin offering.   The security updates are automatically being included in the SaaS platform and require no action on the part of our SaaS platform users.

We are working on version 5.8 for both the WordPress plugins and the SaaS platform, which will include further security updates as well as some JavaScript performance updates as we start to employ new coding standards in the JavaScript engine.

Once we get the foundation solid, we will start working on the User Experience and feature requests.   If there is something you’d like to see in our SaaS offering, please let us know in the forums or by reaching out to us via the email form.

Inconsistent Google Map Coordinates – Kansas City Has Moved

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

One of the issues we run into fairly regularly is our Store Locator Plus® customers get no locations back when they search for a city where they know they do, in fact, have locations. Recently this came up with a customer that was searching Kansas City. If they type Kansas City, MO or Kansas City, KS the would see their locations. So what was going on?

Kansas City – November 2018

Way back in November 2018, Google Maps decided that Kansas City was at 39.0119, -98.48424

We’re not in Kansas City anymore…

Kansas City, November 2018

Kansas City – January 2019

Today, performing the very same address search for Kansas City yields a completely different result. Today Kansas City is in a far more reasonable location at 39.0997265, -94.5785667

Kansas City, January 2019

What Is Going On?

Both location requests pass the same URL to Google Maps JavaScript API with the region and language set properly. Google, however, likes to change their map data sets and lookup algorithms frequently. This is just one more specific case where historical evidence shows that Google Map locations move — at least with the “purposefully lower quality” data set provided via the Maps JavaScript API.

In years of testing we’ve found that some locations move by as much as a quarter-mile EVERY MONTH. It is the inherent “jitter” Google seems to have built into their published maps data. You may even find that if you search Google Maps for Kansas City today it has already moved from the above location.

Their own map service puts it here: 39.0915821,-94.8565881

Google Maps.com — where is Kansas City

Which happens to be pretty darn close to what Open Street Maps is telling us at 39.094, -94.537 — a service we use to cross-reference data on our MySLP service.

Want Kansas City To Stay Put?

MySLP uses an aggregate data set from multiple providers and is constantly refined by user input and our customer service staff to provide more accurate results. Unlike Google – our MySLP users CAN get better results and email real human beings that can fix location data NOW.

API keys with referer restrictions cannot be used

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP
API keys with referer restrictions

You’ve tried typing in addresses into your WordPress Store Locator Plus® map page but always get “location not found”. Being a tech savvy person you took a look at your browser developer console and notice an “API keys with referer restrictions cannot be used with this API.” in the JavaScript console.

Thankfully our MySLP users don’t have to deal with this sort of thing; but if you are using the self-managed WordPress plugins, read on.

Stop the Google API key madness with MySLP

MySLP drops the Google API key madness once-and-for-all. If you are tired of the API key game, it may be time to switch.

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