Secure Geocoding Comes To WordPress

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

The Store Locator Plus® WordPress plugin gets an upgrade to the geocoding process that the MySLP SaaS service users have been enjoying for the past month. With the release of 5.0 version of the Store Locator Plus® plugin for WordPress, all geocoding requests including those coming from the JavaScript embedded map are now routed through the web server to Google.

Security Through Anonymity

Prior to Store Locator Plus® 5, every time a user visited your map page and typed in an address to be searched — typically the zip code for their town or their home address, this request was sent directly to Google. That means Google now has all kinds of great information they are going to store about your site visitors. They know that the user visited your site, when they visited, that they were looking at your location map, and the address where they were looking for your shop.

Fewer Geocode Requests With Store Locator Plus® 5

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

Our Store Locator Plus® 5.0 WordPress plugin is out today with some notable changes.

What Store Locator Plus 5 does have is an improved map rendering process that reduces geocoding requests. Since Google switched over to a 100% pay-as-you-go system for EVERYONE , no “free map views or geocoding” even for long-time users, we decided to focus on helping users reduce their monthly Google fees. WPSLP 5 is the first release to work towards that goal.

Manually Updating WordPress Plugins

Posted by lcleveland in WPSLP

This post is for our Store Locator Plus™ WordPress plugin users that are updating WordPress plugins. Users of our fully managed service do not need to worry about this sort of thing — you’ve earned yourself some extra break time, go ahead and grab an second cup of coffee this morning.

Always use automatic updates

Most WordPress users should perform “inline” or automatic updates. When logged into WordPress go to the Dashboard | Updates and click “Check Again” to check if there are updates to the Store Locator Plus™ plugins. If there are, updateStore Locator Plus™ first.

If you do not see updates for our add ons, re-check with the WordPress Dashboard | Updates | Check Again AFTER updatingStore Locator Plus™ to the latest release.

Sometimes the WordPress updates servers or a third party server is slow or the network connection fails when checking for updates of premium add ons. We have written a workaround for this failure whereStore Locator Plus™ checks directly with our servers, bypassing the standard WordPress update cycle, whenever a new version is installed.

Except when instructed otherwise

If you have received a beta release (prerelease) of our add ons or theStore Locator Plus™ base plugin, follow these instructions to ensure you do not lose any settings. We recently discovered the using the WordPress “Activate Plugin” button after manually updating a plugin does NOT load plugins into memory the same was as the automatic (inline) updates or in the same manner as the plugins bulk actions activate action. That means theStore Locator Plus™ environment may not be loaded after a manual plugin upload and it may reset your settings to the default values. This happens to explain why some third-party premium plugins outside of theStore Locator Plus™ ecosystem sometimes white-screen after install but work fine from that point forward; other developers have told us to “refresh the screen and it will be OK” for this very reason.

The “do not nuke my settings” manual update process:

Deactivate the plugin
Delete the plugin
Go to Plugins | Add New
Select Upload
Upload the beta release zip file we sent you
DO NOT click the Activate button
Go to Plugins on the sidebar
Check off the plugin you just installed
Go to bulk actions and select activate

Tired of managing your locator software?

Try the MySLP managed service.

[myslp-signup-form]