Categorical Location Markers

Posted by lcleveland in Locations

MySLP Professional and Enterprise level services allow for locations to be categorized. Each category for a location can have its own map marker associated with the category. These markers are then displayed on the map to mark the location. (This also applies for those customers using the WordPress SLP plug-in with the Power add-on or Premier)

However, some locations may belong to more than one category. In this case the map marker that is selected to be displayed on the map is determined by the RANK assigned to the category. If multiple categories have the same rank, or no rank, then the first category by alphabetical listing will be the one selected as the “main” category for rendering the map marker.

Default map markers when no category is selected.

Filtering Locations By Category

What happens when a user decides to filter the list of categories? Only locations that are within the selected category are shown.

If the location only belongs to ONE category, as is the case for the “#1 Food Store” in our example above, the choice is easy. Show the category map marker.

But what should be displayed if a location belongs to several categories, as is the case for our “24 Seven #1” location shown in the example above?

Prior to our mid-September 2020 release of Store Locator Plus® (or the Power 5.5.7 add on for our legacy WordPress plugin users), the marker for the “24 Seven #1” location would be the highest ranked category, which is the convenience store marker.

With the mid-September 2020 release, however, this behavior has changed. The map marker displayed will be the one that matches the filter the user selected.

Since our mid-September 2020 release, category filters change the map markers to match.

Multiple Location Categories

What about Store Locator Plus® interfaces that allow users to select more than one category, such as interfaces that allow checkbox selections for categories? Markers will be chosen from the markers for the selected categories only. If a location matches 2 or more of the categories, the highest ranked OF THOSE SELECTED will be displayed on the map.

This is different from earlier versions of Store Locator Plus® where it would always display the highest ranked category map marker, even if it was not part of the checked list of categories.

Locations Panel: Manage Locations

Posted by cici in Advanced, FAQ, Locations, Professional

The Locations panel in Store Locator Plus is where you add, manage, edit and/or delete locations.

Bulk Actions and Filters

SLP Locations panel has a bulk tab with drop down actions and other filters that can be applied . If you have a large number of locations, bulk actions can be a very useful tool. If you have more locations than can fit on the display, you can set the display filter to show more locations. You may also use filters to display and manage non – geocoded locations, or show locations with certain properties. The display can be adjusted to suit your needs but configuration constraints and/or server constraints may effect your outcome.

Not all Bulk actions will appear if you have only the base plugin installed. Bulk action filters for removing Tags, performing Exports, geocoding all uncoded, and bulk categorize certain locations will be shown only if you have the WPSLP Power add-on or Professional or Enterprise level Plans for MySLP

The default number of locations that will be displayed on the admin user Interface is 10. Selecting a large number to display can be useful to view or manage but if your server capacity cannot handle it or changes and you go back to manage locations months or years later and try to access your locations panel, you may see no locations panel. If you see the wheels churning on your computer with no results this could be the reason. If you are not sure of the capabilities of your server, browser and various other factors that effect memory, and inhibit loading and displaying fields, err on the side of caution and set the Filter Display locations back to a manageable size before leaving the panel. If you are migrating servers from a “heavy duty” server to a less robust server, or if your memory becomes an issue you will need to reset the display to a manageable number. See Troubleshooting for more info.

What To Buy: Filter By Brand

Posted by lcleveland in Professional, What To Buy

Question

We need to filter our locations by brand. Does your plugin or an extension to your plugin have this feature?

Assigning Brands To Locations

Power add-on for WPSLP (DIY) or the Professional level plan (or higher) for MySLP is the right choice for doing that. Either allows for simple categories or parent/child relationships between categories. Locations can be assigned to one or more categories. Your users can then search for locations based on those categories.

For more complex hierarchical functionality , button bars , horizontal check-boxes for categories and more customized approaches you might want to check out our WPSLP Premier subscription or the MySLP Enterprise level subscription

Add a category for each brand you offer and your users will be able to filter locations showing only those that offer specific brands.

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.

Tags For Locations

Posted by lcleveland in Locations, Professional, Search, Settings

Tags are text labels that can be used as identifiers and can be added to any location if you have WPSLP (do it yourself) Power Add On, or with the Professional level subscription for MYSLP. It is a quick and informal way to add filters or for grouping features to your Store Locator Plus locations.

Administration

Settings for Store Locator Plus Tag Search are under the Settings/Search section when you have the Power Add On installed.

Turning On Tag Searching

Tag based searches are off by default. Set the Search Form Tag Input to something other than “none”.

Custom Label For Tag Searching

You can set a custom label for the tag search input. By default the label is blank. Leave blank type in what you want to appear for the Search By Tag Label: entry

Pulldown or Text Input

You can elect to have either a drop down or a text box input for users when filtering results by location tags. The default mode is to allow for free-form text input. To use the other methods you must enter a series of your tags separated by commas.

Providing

An “Any ” Selection On The Tag Drop down

You can also provide an “any” selection which will search for all locations, in addition to the list of tags you enter on the drop down. Check off the “show any” setting and Store Locator Plus will automatically add the phrase “any” to the top of your search list.