Store Category Management Improvements

Store Locator Plus® was updated today with store category management improvements. Users reported an issue where the could not disassociate all store categories from a location. Assigning a store to a new category worked as expected, as did changing the category assigned to a location. The issue only appeared when trying to remove all category associates from a location.

Today’s updates resolves that issue and users can now disconnect all category references from a location.

store category management improvements
Store listing showing active categories.

Store Category Management

Store category management is a feature that is available to Professional or Enterprise level subscribers. It is enabled for WordPress plugin users with the Power add on.

Resolving The Issue

The issue impacts both SaaS platform and WordPress plugin users.

WordPress plugin users will need to upgrade to the latest version of the Power plugin to get the store category management improvements. Users with a SaaS subscription have been automatically updated to the improved experience.

post image via Pixabay

Google Maps for JavaScript Update

Store Locator Plus® was recently updated to accommodate the latest Google Maps for JavaScript update which now requires a callback parameter. Third party hosted scripts such as the Google Maps for JavaScript library, a foundational component of Store Locator Plus®, can change how they operate at any time and without warning to the developers that employ these scripts. Thankfully the recent Google Maps change that makes a new callback parameter required only generates a warning. If this follows in the footsteps of prior Google Maps updates, it will one day suddenly be required and many sites that do not update the script deployment will fail.

For our clients using the WordPress plugins, this means you will need to update the Store Locator Plus® plugin before Google “flips the switch”. For our SaaS users, you do not have to do anything — we’ve already updated the library for you.

Our Store Locator January 2023 Updates

Store Locator Plus® has been updated to patch various minor bugs and to improve code design as we move toward implementing new React applets that will modernize the user experience.    The updates in our mid-January release should be transparent to most users.   No action is required for our SaaS platform users.    WordPress plugin users will want to update to the latest version when convenient.

Patches To Our Store Locator Include…

Fix remote web asset test algorithm. This algorithm would sometimes generate a missing variable warning for urlToFetch. In some cases this would cause Store Locator Plus® to think remote web assets (images, CSS files, and other objects hosted on a different website) to show as missing. This has been resolved.

Update code variables, global naming conventions, and related background development elements. These changes are non-functional changes. They are mostly code comments that provide hints to the integrated development environments used by our developers to provider smarter code hints, autocompletion, and quality control services. These changes do not affect functionality.