Legacy Add-ons not compatible with SLP version 4.8 and higher

Posted by cici in FAQ, for WordPress, Our Add Ons, Power Add On, Support, Troubleshooting

Legacy Add-ons

If you want to keep the legacy add-ons, do not upgrade the base plug-in to version 4.7 or above. All individual legacy add-ons have been phased out and replaced over the past 2 plus years due to security patches, coding changes, WP updates, maintenance overhead and inefficiencies that were no longer viable to support. To find the match to your Legacy Add-ons, see FAQ: Legacy versus featured add-on

Please follow the SLP news feeds for important information about updates.

Even if you received a notice in your WordPress admin panel that an update to your base plug-in is available, you do not need to click the update button. All version updates to SLP are optional. We do not auto-update like WordPress does.

If you already updated (most likely if you are reading this) and now try to roll back SLP to earlier version to o retain the Legacy add-on compatibility.

Note: Due to the security patches required by Word Press you may also need to rollback WordPress. Before attempting to roll back or downgrade WordPress or any plugins , make sure you have a recent back-up of your site. Do not attempt this on a live site.

The SLP author does not recommend rolling back versions of any software or WP. This is time consuming and messy, requires technical savvy, and you will miss important security patches. If you are confident that you know what is entailed and are willing to take the risk; it is still recommended to use a back-up service such as Vault Press or Jet Pack.

P.S. If you do not want the headache of maintaining back-ups , updating, obtaining a new Google API, you may want to consider moving over to a My SLP plan. See MYSLP SAAS

Google Map Icons

Posted by lcleveland in Enterprise, Map, Settings

All those little location markers on the map that Google just made FAR more prevalent in their latest update? Those are what they call map icons. They are also clickable which means all those locations will pop up a map bubble even if they are not YOUR Locations for your business. Premier Add On v 4.7.1 or higher for Store Locator Plus or MySLP/Enterprise lets you disable the “clickability” on the map icons.

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

Google Map Style

Posted by cici in Enterprise, Map, Professional, Settings

The WPSLP Experience Add On and MySLP Professional support the Google Map Style rules. These rules let you control the “inner style” of the map itself. Pre-defined map rules allow you to set a variety of styles via the map settings on the SLP admin panel.

For MySLP go to Store Locator Plus > Settings > Map > Map Style

For WPSLP go to Store Locator Plus > Settings > Map > Map Style

The value of this entry is a Google Maps JSON style string. Some of our Plugin Styles in the Style Gallery will set this for you. You can also build your own with services like Map Style With Google.

No Results Found label

Posted by cici in FAQ, Professional, Results, Settings

The text that displays when there are no locations to be displayed can be changed under Settings/Results in the section under Appearance. Type a message in the box to whatever you want the site visitor to see when there are no results found.

Example of the text added under the SLP Settings/results and how it appears to the site visitor front end when no locations or results found:

Store and Category Manager

Posted by cici in Enterprise, Our Add Ons, Power Add On, Professional

Store and Category Manager interface is available if you have the Power Add-on installed (for WPSLP users) or have the MYSLP Professional level or higher. You will see a tab “Categories” in your Store Locator Plus User Interface.

Under side menu MYSLP/StoreLocatorPlus menu

Once you open the Category Tab you can begin to add categories and slugs or edit existing. Set Markers and Icons per category (optional) if you want those to appear in place of map markers. A Bulk action drop down to delete some or all categories is at the top of the category box.

Settings/Search

You can choose to show the categories that you have created in a drop down menu as part of the search form. There are additional category selector options available for WPSLP premier subscribers or MYSLP Enterprise subscribers (example see Checkbox selector). You can add text as a label that will display at the top of the categories drop down menu, or you can leave blank. You can also add text for the category select box that will appear in front of the category drop down on the user interface.

Hide Empty Categories Setting

For WPSLP Power add-on users . Do NOT turn this on unless you have Pages enabled.

Settings/Results

If you want the category icons to appear in results list check off Category Icons

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.

Cluster Map Markers

Posted by lcleveland in Enterprise, Our Add Ons

Cluster Map Markers is available as part of the Premier plugin included with the Premier Subscription for Store Locator Plus or the Enterprise level of MySLP. Cluster Markers show a single map marker graphic (circle with number inside it) when two or more (you set this number) markers are within close proximity to one another on the current map view. As a user zooms in on the cluster, the clusters break apart to show the individual markers. When zoomed out the individual location markers combine into a single marker graphic with the count of locations represented by the graphic shown in the center. You determine the default radius and minimum number of locations before cluster map marker is engaged. Your “center map at” and default radius setting will effect where the map center is located.

Turn On Cluster Markers

Go to the Store Locator Plus : Settings / Map and look under the Appearance section for “Enable Cluster Markers”.

Read the Store Locator Plus news articles about Cluster Map Markers.

Location Search Enhancements

Posted by lcleveland in Enterprise, Search

Premier subscribers or MYSLP Enterprise level subscribers will see the following features under the Store Locator Plus Settings / Search Panel.

Premier settings to influence Google search

Show Address Guess

If checked, replace the address the customer typed into the address box with what Google thought they meant. This feature is useful if your site visitor is browsing “incognito: or the location sensor is not activated.

Country Influences Guess

When checked , SLP uses the selected Country Map Domain to influence how Google returns the location based on what they think the user meant when entering a search address. Google returns the most searched locations based on an algorithm. This feature is coded to redirect the returned location based on your location data points.

Boundaries Influence Guess

Uses a search boundary to influence how Google guesses what the user meant when entering a search address.

Locations in your data set will show a rectangle that surrounds all of your locations.
Defined Boundary is a rectangle that you define with a map that will appear below.
The default is none, using standard Google address lookup rules.

These features are very useful, especially when you have a mix of some non – standard Zip/postal codes or addresses that otherwise might be hard to find with the basic Google MAP API query.

Example CSV Import Files

Posted by lcleveland in Our Add Ons, Professional

CSV Imports are the most-used feature for our MySLP Professional users and for our WordPress SLP self managed DIY customers that purchased the Power add on.

Learn about CSV Import formatting and other import notes.

Below files are examples only, you will need to set up your own import files to add your locations.

Example CSV Import Files

9 Restaurants Basic CSV Import

We consider this the simplest usable format for most businesses. It includes the Store Name (Store), Address, City, State, and Zip columns.

You can download our example on our server here

9 Restaurants Full Address

A full address format of the 10 Restaurants Basic CSV Import format. It includes the Store Name (Store), Address, Address 2, City, State, and Zip, and Country columns.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jE_BZTGpHrAuZzYy-K7CwLcFanPzKGC9

9 Restaurants With Latitude and Longitude

The same 9 places with full address and latitude and longitude. Including latitude and longitude gets the locations online and active on the site faster. This was created from an Export CSV of the above Full Address file when we stripped the sl_id column and all the blank columns at the end, relabeled the header row to be user friendly.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jkfRlY4K2retNGFaRVcW17WSLi_tfRmj

Remote file Retrieval; (Currently being patched )

One quick way to tell if your file is accessible is to put the URL you are using for your imports into your browser. Does it download a CSV file you can open with a text editor? If No; It isn’t a “vanilla” CSV file readable by the “Internet”.

This is the link you can use to see if remote file retrieval is working

For example — if you go HERE
https://demo.storelocatorplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/9-Restaurants-With-Lat-Lng-Cat.csv

you see an option to download a file

But if you go here :
https://demo.storelocatorplus.com/9-restaurants-with-lat-lng-cat/

it shows you a web page. That second link above from our demo site is NOT a valid remote CSV file URL

Google changed how share links on drives are working and we have found no way to get to the raw CSV file with any links they provided to us.

So Google Drive hosted CSV files is likely never going to work again. Just one more way for them to track everything you do online by using an embed object vs. a flat CSV that they give you access too.