for Store Locator Plus®
Details for the Advanced level SaaS service. Many features are present in the Store Locator Plus® for WordPress plugin.
The WPSLP Power Add On or MySLP/Professional plan allows you to import CSV files with several options. View the information under SLP/Locations/Import . You have various options to consider when determining how to update locations that match your pre-existing locations.
Options available on how to handle duplicates: Choose to Add, Skip, and /or Update.
Location Sensor Aware available with the SLP SaaS subscription Professional level (or higher ) service plan
Location Sensor capability is also a feature with the WPSLP Plug in Power add-on.
Location sensor feature can be turned on/off with a simple check box under the SLP/General tab.
When the box is checked and a visitor to your site performs a search , SLP queries the browser and requests their current location. If the browser allows location queries it will return their geographic location which will be used to set the default search location.
Note: This will only work with most browsers if you have a secure site and/or if your site visitor “allows” their location to be visible to you.
Google may return a “No results found” if you do NOT have an HTTPS site and will stop the javascript from loading. SLP with the Power add-on will negate Location sensor settings entirely if you do not have https:// enabling your page to continue to load. If you require the location sensor functionality to work properly you must have a valid SSL certification.
Accuracy varies greatly from location to location. In some places, service providers may be able to provide a location to within a few meters. All locations returned by service providers are estimates only and we do not guarantee the accuracy of the locations provided. Your SLP settings also determine the number of locations shown nearest the site visitor. Settings for radius, number of results to return and center of map all interact to show locations nearest to the site visitor.
Changes as of June 11, 2018 will effect the WordPress Store Locator Plus (DIY) community. Google requires all sites using map services to have an API key with a billing account attached. See Google Developers console.
The Browser key is used to display the map and handle user-input addresses during a location search. The Geocoding API is used on your WordPress server to geocode locations you’ve entered via the Google “Places” box and APIs. You do not need the additional geocoding “key” unless you have added restrictions. You do however, need to have the geocoding API enabled in your Google projects library.
Google’s push for all websites to be HTTPS has been a game changer over the past few years with many companies switching from HTTP to HTTPS with some hiccups along the way. Some of the site transfer mishaps are minor, but if done incorrectly can cause your plug-ins to misbehave , and often is the case, after the transition team has left the building.
If you have never had HTTPS on your site, you will undoubtedly run into an issue with how your site assets are loaded. By assets we are referring to things like images, JavaScript, and even your CSS. Insecure assets may not stop the green padlock from showing in browsers, but it will add an exclamation point warning to your users that information is being loaded insecurely.
Occasionally we see comments from customers that Store locator Plus broke their site or is not working. When asked if they recently migrated their site they often state nothing has changed. On further investigation , or by inspecting their console we often see the “Mixed Content warnings” quite often for images or icons from older versions of Store Locator Plus. This is a sure fire clue that there was indeed a “site migration”. They started out with their site when the SLP plug-in was originally installed as HTTP and now , at least part of their site, is HTTPS. This is known as a protocol migration. If you migrate your site from HTTP to HTTPS, Google treats this as a site move with a URL change. That means you may need to obtain a new Google API key for SLP to work properly. With version SLP 4.9.15 you are allowed to add HTTP referrers now as long as you also obtain a geocode key. See info about those changes under news
A site migration is a great opportunity to address legacy issues. If you have outdated legacy add-ons this is a good time to invest in your future by planning for and including any update expenses in your overall budget. Including these costs in the project scope is the most cost-effective method to ensure your site stays relevant and on-track. When you consider that issues that may arise after going live will require additional time , resources and, yes, may even create downtime and loss of traffic to your site it is worth including the new versions in your budget.
*Included with WPSLP Premier subscription or MySLP Enterprise level Subscriptions. 
The Horizontal or Vertical Checkbox Category Selector feature is available for WPSLP Premier or MySLP Enterprise level subscription customers. The checkbox works with an “OR” selection based on the Parent category. With Premier or Enterprise you will see additional category selectors under the Settings/Search/Category section. For example : If you check the [] red and [] blue boxes on the category selector it will show any location in the red OR blue category.
The location limit feature is available exclusively to our Store Locator Plus Premier/Enterprise customers.
When the URL Control module is active you can enable location ID passing by turning on “Location Limit” under the General / User Interface tab.
When this is enabled you can pass in a limit for the number of locations to be returned when the map initially loads and when a search is performed by adding ?limit=<id> to the end of the page address where your locator map is deployed with the [slplus] shortcode.
Example: Client has 250 results to return by default but when the site via a URL link loaded they only wanted 5 to come back.
Location Limit functionality supersedes the initial default limit.
Removing the distance from the results can be done by editing the Results Layout. You will see the results layout box if you have the Experience add-on for WPSLP or have the professional level plan or higher for MYSLP.
For MySLP go to Store Locator Plus > Settings > Results > Appearance
For WPSLP go to Store Locator Plus > Settings > Results > Appearance
With the Results Layout setting find the HTML span tag with the slp_location distance shortcode.
Delete that line.
Please check your versions on our Home site to ensure you are using the latest versions of the plug-in and add-ons. A lot has changed since release 4.9.2. See our News channel for latest information regarding WordPress, SLP, and Google changes. Changes to the terms for Google API use went into effect or or about June 11, 2018. This effected every plug-in that utilized Google APIs. Newer Versions of WPSLP added fields for Google API key placement. This means, if you had been using older versions in order to keep legacy add-ons, and never added your Google MAP API key to SLP, your map will not display correctly. See News for current information
Our MySLP locator service updates the versions for you and takes care of the Google Maps and geocode API s. You add your locations and adjust your map look-and-feel settings– then when you are ready paste a JavaScript snippet into your website. It doesn’t even need to be running WordPress.
The auto-update of WordPress v 4.8.2 and above required a major update to the WP Store Locator Plus free base plug-in resulting in the end of compatibility with the popular Pro Pack , Tagalong and other Legacy add-ons. The Legacy add-ons are no longer supported nor maintained and have been retired over the past two years as announced in news posts, blogs , changelogs, mail campaigns and social media. If you are not sure if your add-on is considered Legacy, see the FAQ comparison featured to Legacy add-ons
Some of our customers were surprised by the change and retirement of the Legacy Add-ons. We tried to give as much of a heads up as possible using news blogs, content news to the home site and reached out using a Mail Chimp campaign for those most likely effected. Ultimately, there is no sure fire method to reach the thousands of customers who may have had these older add-ons installed. If there is one thing we know, change in the technical genre is inevitable. The SLP support team will always endeavor to help our customers transition to the new age. We pledge they will see real value-added from updating their site and software . Please take a moment to review the multiple benefits of utilizing the newer Experience add-on, Power add-on.
Although downgrading to an earlier version of SLP is an option, you may note that changes to the WordPress code and their security patches may disable features. Before making any changes to your site you should ensure you are backing up your site WP database and files. It is very important to take this step before you have issues or worse, site crashes. WordPress security has become more robust over the years.
For more information please see this important message from the author:
Store locator Plus updates and retired add-ons