Store Locator Plus® PHP 8 Compatible & Relisting Status

Posted by lcleveland in Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

This past week we published an updated version of the base Store Locator Plus® WordPress plugin for version 5.12.4.  This patch allows Store Locator Plus® to run in PHP 8 environments despite WordPress itself clearly stating PHP 8 is NOT officially supported in the core WordPress install.

Unfortunately you still need to go to our main WordPress site to get the latest release.   The WordPress plugin team has yet to approve our plugin for listing in the direct despite providing a patch for the initial security concern during the summer of 2021.

Speaking of Relisting…

We have been working on literally hundreds of code changes to meet the new strict demands of the WordPress plugin team.  They insisted on a full code scan and review of all data I/O calls and required that we publish hundreds of escaping and sanitizing methods throughout.  While some of these updates did help close potential security holes, many of the changes flagged by the “AI bot code sniffer” were not true security weaknesses; This highlights a notable concern when humans employ digital intelligence tools to make decisions — but that is a debate for another day.

For now, we have spent hundreds of hours running the scanning tools we found for analyzing the code, evaluating thousands of warnings, and addresses dozens of legitimate concerns.  We worked around hundreds of false flags in the reports. The end result is a new version of the base plugin that is a good bit more secure against potential security issues.

The latest problems uncovered in testing have not come about from our security updates, but uncovered fundamental breaking changes in WordPress core.     WordPress has put the emphasis on block themes and the supporting core utilities that support them.   This has broken fundamental features of WordPress and has changed the order of precedence in which their hooks-and-filters are called.   This leads to notably different behavior in plugins and themes — not just Store Locator Plus®. Thankfully our QA team has found the issues with these new WordPress behaviors before we released our latest update and we have been working diligently to resolve them.   Our hope is the new 5.13 release not only passes the WordPress security scan but also works better than our 5.12 release when it comes to new block-based themes while retaining full compatibility with legacy themes.

With that said, we are hoping to pass our QA tests soon and have a new 5.13 release officially listed in the WordPress plugin directory.     Then we can start focusing on new features and a user experience overhaul that all of our customers can enjoy — including our SaaS customers.

Speaking of the SaaS version, thankfully none of these security things impact the SaaS version.   For those of you that switched over to the Saas release — we’ll have new features and UX updates coming your way later this year!

More JavaScript and Security Improvements for Store Locator Plus®

Posted by lcleveland in Map Software

Store Locator Plus® was updated today to bring additional JavaScript and security improvements to the map and locator application.

The security improvements are based on feedback from the user community and are not related to direct reports of security threats.  The security concerns only impact users of the self-managed WordPress plugins.  The vast majority of the work was done on administrative access and sanitizing of input values.   SaaS users are not impacted by these issues.

The JavaScript improvements include a new order-of-precedence system that eliminates some redundancy when processing JavaScript files, especially with the Professional and Enterprise level SaaS accounts.   The improvement means slightly faster script loading times.     WordPress plugin users are also impacted by this performance issue, and should update the entire Store Locator Plus® plugin stack to the latest release.

Bug Fixes

Along with the JavaScript improvements, a few bug fixes are included:

  • Enterprise clients using cluster map markers may have experience map outages , this is resolved.
  • Enterprise clients using the location loading indicator set to ‘circle’ had issues with the map not displaying, this is resolved.
  • Improvements have been made for users entering invalid JSON settings for the Google Map Style. Invalid JSON would prevent the JavaScript engine from loading.  Invalid values are now ignored. This issue impacted our Professional level subscribers.

Updating Your Location Software

The Software as a Service version of the application was updated overnight.  Users of the SaaS platform do not need to take any action to receive the latest features and patches.

The above issues also impacted all WordPress plugin users and require updating to the latest release.  The folks at WordPress.com have yet to approve our latest updates and re-list the main plugin.  You’ll need to manually uninstall and re-install the main Store Locator Plus® plugin, which can be purchased from our WordPress plugin store.

 

Update On WordPress Directory Listing

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

Store Locator Plus® 5.9 was released last week as a security update for the WordPress plugin community.   The plugin was reviewed by the WordPress Directory staff.    They chose to keep the plugin closed for what they deemed “potential future issues” with the plugin as well as requests for several changes to follow what they deem “best practices”.   Of note in this review is that they did not cite any of the publicly reported vulnerabilities that closed the plugin in the first place as remaining open.

In other words, all reported vulnerabilities were apparently addressed to their satisfaction.

However, they have opted to keep the plugin closed until we can update our coding style.   While we are willing to work toward their new “best design practices” for coding style, this is going to take some time.  For example, the latest 5.10.1 release of the Store Locator Plus® plugin has replaced the PHP standard <?= shorthand with the longer <?php echo syntax per the WordPress Plugin Directory Team’s request.   Not a security issue, but something they requested we change before being re-listed.    This requires that we run a full internal test if the updated code before it can be released to the general public.

While we wait for the WordPress Plugin Directory Team to approve re-listing, our self-managed WordPress plugin users can only receive updates to the Store Locator Plus® plugin.  You can find this in the WordPress plugin store.   You can learn more about the update process in our 5.9 Security Update Released news post.

While we hope that the folks over at WordPress.com deem our plugin worthy of being re-listed in the near future, we have no control over what they will come back with during each review.   It could be weeks or months before the plugin is available again in the standard directory with one-click updates being available.

This is one of the biggest advantages to being on the SaaS offering, no need to manually update your locator software.  EVER.