Locator Data – The Field Names

Posted by lcleveland in Data, for Everything, for WordPress, Our Add Ons, Professional, Third Party Add Ons

Store Locator Plus includes a default set of data fields that is included with every installation as well as extended fields provided by add-on packs.

For  data fields, including those added with the Power add-on, you can output the data in the map info bubble or results layout,  by using the following shortcode:

[slp_location data.<field_slug>]

For example:

[slp_location data.contact]

[slp_location data.facebook_custom_url] (for someone that added a field named Facebook Custom URL).

Both the default data and extended data can be displayed in the search results, (for SEO Pages some fields will be [storepage field=contact] for SEO-friendly details pages. Most of the tools provided by the various add-on packs work best when using the field slug. The slug is a unique name for the field that is similar-to, but not exactly the same as, the field name.

The slugs are used in the add-on packs such as the layout strings from the Experience Add On in as well as the column headers for CSV Import in the Power Add On.

Default Location Fields

ID

Slug: id
Data field: sl_id
Type: integer (auto-assigned)

Name

Slug: store
Data field: sl_store
Type: string up to 255 characters

Address

Slug: address
Data field: sl_address
Type: string up to 255 characters

Address Line 2

Slug: address2
Data field: sl_address2
Type: string up to 255 characters

City

Slug: city
Data field: sl_city
Type: string up to 255 characters

State

Slug: state
Data field: sl_state
Type: string up to 255 characters

Zip

Slug: zip
Data field: sl_zip
Type: string up to 255 characters

Country

Slug: country
Data field: sl_country
Type: string up to 255 characters

Latitude

Slug: latitude
Data field: sl_latitude
Type: string up to 255 characters

Longitude

Slug: longitude
Data field: sl_longitude
Type: string up to 255 characters

Tags

Slug: tags
Data field: sl_tags
Type: Text up to 4096 characters

The Pro Pack tags field. Requires Pro Pack for full functionality.

Description

Slug: description
Data field: sl_description
Type: Long text, as determined by your MySQL settings.  More than 4096 characters.

Email

Slug: email
Data field: sl_email
Type: string up to 255 characters

Website

Slug: url
Data field: sl_url
Type: string up to 255 characters

Hours

Slug: hours
Data field: sl_hours
Type: string up to 255 characters

Phone

Slug: phone
Data field: sl_phone
Type: string up to 255 characters

Fax

Slug: fax
Data field: sl_fax
Type: string up to 255 characters

Image

Slug: image
Data field: sl_image
Type: string up to 255 characters

An fully qualified image URL, http:: with a full domain.

Private

Slug: private
Data field: sl_private
Type: A single character string.

May be used in the future as a 1|0 value to determine if a location is to only appear on the admin interface and not front end searches.

Neat Title

Slug: neat_title
Data field: sl_neat_title
Type: string up to 255 characters

May be used in the future as an alternate store name or subtitle.

Linked Post ID

Slug: linked_postid
Data field: sl_linked_postid
Type: integer, auto-assigned

The ID of the related store_page entry where extra taxonomy data and other location data is stored. Used with Store Pages and Tagalong. Should not be modified.

Pages URL

Slug: pages_url
Data field: sl_pages_url
Type: string up to 255 characters

The relative URL for the Store Pages linked post ID. Provides a processing shortcut for the Store Pages add-on pack.

Pages On

Slug: pages_on
Data field: sl_pages_on
Type: a single 1|0 character

Used with Store Pages to determine which locations have been populated with Store Pages template content.

Option Value

Slug: option_value
Data field: sl_option_value
Type: text up to 4096 characters

A serialized JSON data object which can store extra location data. Slower and less direct than extended data fields.

Last Updated

Slug: lastupdated
Data field: sl_lastupdated
Type: timestamp

A date and time MySQL timestamp indicating the last time the main data for the location was updated.

Initial Distance

Slug: initial_distance
Data field: sl_initial_distance
Type: A float.

The initial distance calculated between your center map latitude/longitude and the location.

Add On Pack Import Fields

These fields appear in the extended data table, slp_extendo. The field metadata, used to manage the slp_extendo table, is store din the slp_extendo_meta table.

Power Add On : Contacts Enabled

Identifier a unique location identifier from an external database that can be used to update existing locations in Store Locator Plus

Contact

First Name

Last Name

Title

Department

Training

Facility Type

Office Phone

Mobile Phone

Contact Fax

Contact Email

Office Hours – long formatted text

Contact Address – long formatted text

Notes – long formatted text

Featured – valid values are “1” for featured and “0” (zero).

Rank – an integer from 1 (highest rank/top of list) to 999999. 0 = no rank.

Power Add On : Categories Data

Power categories utilize the built-in WordPress custom taxonomy system. Standard WordPress category IDs are kept in the term_relationships and term_taxonomy tables. The relationship between locations and categories is managed via the slp_tagalong table that maps the Store Locator Plus id field to the WordPress Taxonomy term_id.

Table: slp_tagalong
field: sl_id = the store id
field: term_id = the WordPress taxonomy id
Read More “Locator Data – The Field Names”

Import remote file retrieval

Posted by cici in Our Add Ons, Professional

Power Add-on for WPSLP or the Professional level or higher for MySLP   allows the administrator to schedule your Import process from a remote file retrieval (must be accessible public) to provide more control over recurring imports from a full url where you CSV file resides and allows flexibility for scheduling the time for daily imports.

WordPress CRON is not exact, it executes the next time a visitor comes to your site.

WordPress times are UTC/GMT time NOT local time. Set to none and leave the URL blank to clear the CRON job. Example: 14:25. (Default: empty = do not run daily cron)

Checking your server, PHP and MySQL to ensure the character set is correct will go a long way toward importing special characters like registration characters.

Additional Import Data field headers

Posted by cici in Our Add Ons, Professional

If you have the Power add-on  for the Self managed WPSLP or if you have the Professional Level MySLP SaaS plan, you will have the ability to import data fields via a properly formatted csv file.  All columns MUST have a header row with  the correct  field name.   All fields are short text fields, up to 255 characters, unless otherwise noted.  The header text is NOT case sensitive.

If you are using the category  functionality of Power you may want to import and assign a category slug on the fly.  The header field name is:

category (or plural categories).

If you wish to import and assign more than one category  per location , you will need to use a comma-separated list for the data field  (category).  Example: My location has more than one category associated with it, I want to indicate it is a hotel,restaurant, and has music.  Category  for that location would show under the column with the header row “category”…. hotel,restaurant,music

Alternatively, to define parent/child relationships , i.e.  hierarchical categories , use a double colon as the separator Example the Parent is Facility, the child is showroom.

Facility::Showroom.

Use Dial Link For Phone Setting

Posted by cici in Our Add Ons, Professional, Results, Settings

Included in MySLP Professional and WPSLP Experience.

Find it under Settings | Results | Results Interaction

When the Use Dial Link for Phone Setting is checked it will make the phone number in your locations results clickable to auto dial by adding a tel: based hyperlink.

The dial-ready hyperlink will be used wherever the [slp_location] shortcode is used.   This includes the results under the map, directory landing pages, and in Store Pages if the [slp_location] shortcode is used instead of the [storepage field=”phone”] shortcode.

Extensions Pause

Use along with the Phone Extension Delimiter setting to handle pauses for extensions.

 

Formerly labelled: Make a Dial Link Phone number (clickable)

 

Results Settings and interaction

Posted by lcleveland in Enterprise, Our Add Ons, Results, Settings

Additional Results Interaction features  are available with the MySLP/Enterprise or   WPSLP Premier Add On.  The results interaction set of features provides a variety of visual cues on the location map to indicate the location a user has clicked  when viewing a list of locations., providing a variety of additional options beyond the standard Info Bubble that Store Locator Plus displays when a location is clicked.

Use the Experience add-on to completely disable the Info Bubble under the map and only use these interactive result indicators. When a visitor to your site clicks on the results marker they will see additional information such as description you have entered for that location, in addition to the fields that are populated for the location.

Info bubble turned off, marker clicked shows the additional info for that location
Read More “Results Settings and interaction”

Troubleshooting Large scale Exports/Imports

Posted by cici in FAQ, Locations, Our Add Ons, Power Add On, Professional, Troubleshooting

Issue: Exports/Imports Incomplete

Multiple large-scale exports (export function is available with Power Add-on ) have been tested on the Store Locator Plus dev sites. On a relatively small server, a virtual machine with 2GB RAM running CentOS 6, we  have been able to export 10,000 locations within 15 minutes with no issues. Special characters and extended data have also exported without issue.

If you are experiencing  issues there are several things to check that can cause problems during an export:

Web Server Process Limits

Apache, and nginx  have per-process limits. This is built into the web server to prevent “runaway” processes that eat up all of the CPU and memory on the server over time. On shared servers this limit is very low and typically allows 30 seconds to 2 minutes of processing time. Large data sets can use up to 5 minutes or more of processing time. Make sure your server has a high enough limit to allow the entire data export to complete execution.

Read More “Troubleshooting Large scale Exports/Imports”

Q. What is the purpose of ranking under category manager?

Posted by cici in FAQ, Our Add Ons, Professional, Results, Settings

Category ranking is a feature when you are using the Power Add-on  (for the self managed WPSLP plugin) or the Professional or higher level  subscription for MYSLP SaaS  with the category manager. The rank is used to sort the categories which will affect the map marker that is used when a location has been assigned more than one category. Following the page ranking paradigm set by WordPress, the rank field is a simple numeric weighting for the categories. This extended data attribute for categories makes it easy to re-arrange the “weight” of categories for map marker selection without mangling category slugs. The lower the number, the higher the precedence for the map marker.

The option to set a category rank can be found under the Store Locator Plus Categories tab.

Tables and Category Data System

Posted by cici in Our Add Ons, Professional

Table

There are components of the Power Add-on that use the built-in WordPress category system involving several tables.   When moving sites over or combining sites, whether it be from a staging site, or  an older site  to a live site , getting the data in wp_slp_tagalong to match up with a pre-existing site that has pre-existing category data (taxonomies) will be a chore.

For example,

Under a Current site , there may have been an assigned Category “A” ID # 3 at the time the category was created in the taxonomy table but  Live may already be using that ID, therefore when you create a  Category “A” it may be assigned ID #19.

In order to “just move tagalong /categories over” you would need to edit every entry in the “wp_slp_tagalong” table and change ID # 3 to ID #19. To do so, you need to first let WordPress create all of the categories (you could do this with a category-only import) second look up all the ID numbers of the assigned categories, third edit the wp_slp_tagalong exported data from Current to change all of the ID numbers from the “old” WordPress site to be the ID# assigned on the “new (Live)” WordPress site. If you only have 2 or 3 categories it may not be a chore but it can get out-of-hand very quickly. If you make any editing mistakes you will have various issues.

WordPress table descriptions can be found under the WordPress Codex page Database Descriptions

The two tables that would be employed by WordPress when creating or maintaining a category:

wp_terms = the category information itself

wp_term_taxonomy = the metadata that tells WordPress about different category groupings, in other words “this category is for posts”, “this category is for Store Locator Plus locations”, “this category is for videos”, etc. You will not need to export/import this but you WILL need to know what the old (Current) system assigned as the SLP Locations taxonomy ID and what it is on the new WP system. When you export wp_terms from the old system you will need to edit that export and change the taxonomy ID from what it was on Current to what it is on Live.

Data fields to display in results

Posted by cici in Our Add Ons, Professional, Professional, Results, Settings

Store Locator Plus includes a default set of data fields that is included with every installation. Various add-on packs add extended data fields.

For ALL extended data fields you can output the data in ANY info bubble, results layout, etc.if you have an add-on pack that allows you to change the layouts (Experience add-on) or if you are using the SLP SaaS Professional level Plan.

Read More “Data fields to display in results”