This set of instructions will require you to be using the MySLP Professional level of service or higher. The Professional level includes the Experience add on that provides the Custom CSS rules interface. Instructions here are specific to MySLP but will work for WordPress plugin users as well.
Premier Members with an active subscription can restrict the number of locator queries that can be made by a single IP address. This feature can help prevent “location list theft” where a competitor uses the locator to scrape location information from a website or JavaScript query.
Note: In order to enable these settings you must enter your Premier Subscription user ID and Subscription ID under the General / Admin tab. When entered correctly the notice under “Add On Packs , Subscription Accounts” will tell you your subscription is validated. This feature is only functional while your subscription is active.
When your subscription has been validated you will see new options available to you under several Store Locator Plus tabs. The new Security settings will appear under the General /App subtab as shown below.
This is the maximum number of location searches a user can perform within the Block Requests Time Span before their IP address is blocked from all locator requests.
This should be set to an integer value greater than 0.
The first page load request from an IP address is always allowed, even if this setting is 0.
If this is set to “2” and the Block Request Time Span is set to “Hour” the system will allow 2 location searches before the IP address is blocked.
The initial loading of the locator page will count as a “search” if you have the default “show locations at startup” enabled.
Changing this parameter will not release already-blocked IP addresses.
This setting determines over which period of time the locator request limit is checked. A user that has more than the Block Requests Limit number of locator searches performed in this time period will cause their IP address to be blocked from future location searches until their IP is “released” from the block list.
Setting this value to Never will disable the IP blocking system.
Changing this parameter will not release already-blocked IP addresses.
This is the maximum amount of time a request is “remembered” for a given IP address. Once this amount of time has passed since the most recent location request that triggered the block the IP address is “released” and once again free to perform location searches.
A list of IP addresses that will not be tracked by the blocker. This allows unlimited location lookups from these IP addresses.
Each address entry should be on a separate line.
Uses standard Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) format. Typical entries include:
Keep in mind that an IP address is not a unique “user” or “computer”. Many locations share an IP address such as a hotel or your local Starbucks. The limitations will apply to the entire group of users from the same shared IP address.
Once an IP address has been blocked, subsequent location requests are not tracked until the block has been released. This design lessens the server load in both volume of data stored and data I/O requests. It helps alleviate issues from possible denial-of-service type attacks where a bot loading requests in rapid succession could overwhelm the data storage and/or database I/O processing.
Blocking Locator Requests was added in the Premier Plugin version 4.7.11.
WordPress blog posts likes to use curly quotes instead of straight quotes whenever you write an article. Our documentation site is built on WordPress which means many of our articles are replaced any quotes we type in an article with curly quotes.
The problem is that the WordPress shortcode processor does NOT like curly quotes. If you use curly quotes in a shortcode attribute such as [slp_directory by=”city”] and those quotes are “curly”, WordPress treats the quotes as a plain-old alphabetic character just like the C-I-T or Y in “city”. In other words WordPress things you mean “by quote-city-quote” not “by city”.
If you copy-and-paste most examples from this documentation site WordPress will copy the “pretty curly quotes” into your shortcode. If you paste that into your WordPress page it breaks.
An example of how this can impact Store Locator Plus can be seen from my example where I pasted the slp_directory shortcode directly from the docs site into my test site. I get an invalid data query because WordPress added curly-quotes to my data field name. The SLP database does not have a field name quotesl_storequote but does have a field named sl_store.
Make sure you re-type each quote manually. Typing the ” in your blog instead of copy-and-paste will ensure you are getting “straight quotes” in your shortcode attributes not curly quotes.
This is how the example looks now that the curly quotes have been replaced with straight quotes.
Store Locator Plus . Store Locator Plus SaaS: Enterprise level subscribers have a module that adds URL control functionality.
Territory Bounds module was moved from the General | Data tab to the General | Server | Web App Settings section. Cluster Map Markers is useful for a large dataset in close proximity to each other on the map.
A URL Control module was been added to the application for Enterprise or premier subscribers. Enabling this module will turn on the interface to allow additional data to be presented in a web page URL to impact how the locator behaves.
The first URL Control option is to pass a location ID in via a URL. Adding ?location=<id> to the end of a web page address that hosts the locator will cause the page to load with the specified location being highlighted as if the map marker was clicked. The default behavior is to show the info bubble for that location.
Results Layout ShortcodesThe Experience Add On allows you to custom tailor the look and feel of the Store Locator Plus plugin on your site. To accomplish this the plugin uses a combination of HTML and special shortcodes. These can be changed or checked off under the Settings* tab the plugin.
* formerly referred to as Experience tab, if you do not see Settings in the UI you are not using the latest version of Store locator Plus
This is set via the View / Layout setting. It determines the overall layout for the plugin based on 3 primary components: The Search Form, The Map, and The Results.
Enabling URL Control features will require an active Premier Subscription.
When the URL Control module is active you can enable location ID passing by turning on “Location Selection” under the General / User Interface tab.
When this is enabled you can pass in a location ID by adding ?location=<id> to the end of the page address where your locator map is deployed with the [slplus] shortcode.
When the location ID is present and the settings is enabled the specified location will be activated on the location map as if a user had clicked the marker on the map. This will show the info bubble by default.
Note: If cluster map markers are enabled they will be turned off for the initial page load. Subsequent input or searches by the user will re-activate the cluster map markers.
Note: When passing in a location ID via a URL the location latitude/longitude will become the center point for the map display. The location that is shown will be at the top of the result listing if sort by distance (default) is in place.
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.
When the URL Control module is active you can filter locations to show only this matching the tag(s) by turning on “Filter By Tag” under the General / User Interface tab.
This setting will require the Power Add On to be installed and active.
This setting will also require the following shortcode to be present in the Results Layout. The shortcode is standard in most Store Locator Plus provided Style Gallery Styles. It can be removed or changed if you have the Experience Add On active.
[slp_search_element selector_with_label="tag"]
An example of a Results Layout where locations are assigned a single tag. With multiple tags the entire list will be hyperlinked and will not likely perform as expected. Note the [slp_location data.sl_tags] takes the place of the [slp_location pro_tags] shortcode that is set by default on most Style Gallery styles.
</div>
If you have URL controls enabled you can now pass in location filters based on a tag by adding ?only_with_tag=red to the end of your locations page URL.
You can combine the URL control options by using standard URL notation for parameter passing.
The standard is to define the first parameter by starting with a question mark.
Additional parameters are started with an ampersand.
To pass a location ID and a location limit, in this example to show ONLY the location specified, you would add ?location=32&limit=1 to your map page URL.
A. You can mark any Location as Private.
With the Power add-on you will find additional Bulk Actions under the Locations/Manage panel. There is a drop down menu under the Bulk actions tab that can be utilized to remove many, some or all tags associated with the location data. Check off which locations you want to remove the tags from, or you may check off all and select the filter to “Apply to all”
