Resolved – Settings Being Reset After Updates

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Release Notes, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

Over the past 6 months or so we’ve been working with customers to resolve an issue where updating Store Locator Plus® would reset some (not all) settings. This was especially prevalent with our WordPress plugin users. With the latest 2511.08.XX release we believe we’ve finally put this issue to rest.

For some users, when they would update the base Store Locator Plus® WordPress plugin they would lose some settings. One of the settings we noticed on one of our test boxes was the Google Maps API key being reset. The full list of possible settings that could be impacted are shown here:

broadcast_timestamp => 0
default_country => us
extended_data_tested => 0
map_language => en
next_field_id => 1
next_field_ported => 
premium_user_id => 
premium_subscription_id => 
radius_behavior => always_use
slplus_plugindir => /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/store-locator-plus/
slplus_basename => store-locator-plus/store-locator-plus.php
themes_last_updated => 0
active_style_css => div#map img {...more CSS...
admin_notice_dismissed => 0
invalid_query_message => We did not receive a valid JSONP response.
radii => 10,25,50,100,(200),500
searchlayout => ...HTML...
hide_address_entry => 0
hide_radius_selector => 0
label_radius => Within
label_search => Address / Zip
map_height => 480
map_height_units => px
map_width => 100
map_width_units => %
remove_credits => 0
maplayout => ...HTML...
initial_results_returned => 25
max_results_returned => 25
message_bad_address => Could not locate this address. Please try a different location.
message_no_results => No locations found.
instructions => Enter an address or zip code and click the find locations button.
label_hours => Hours
label_image => Image
theme => a_gallery_style
style_id => 
layout => ...HTML...
log_schedule_messages => 0
google_geocode_key => AI...HY
google_server_key => AI...HY
url_control_description =>
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Editing Categories and Location Import/Export

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Release Notes, Store Locator, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP

During the month of June we have been working on several patches for both Store Locator Plus® SaaS platform and WordPress plugin users. We have also performed multiple tweaks to improve performance including leveraging some PHP 8 specific performance tweaks.

SaaS User Editing Categories

All SaaS users received an updated earlier this week patching the category edit functionality. Buried deep in the new settings history tracker was an issue that prevented categories from being edited and saved after they were created. 

Since our SaaS platform still runs most of the core features through the old-school WordPress core code it inherits a lot of garbage including the very outdated category editor (we are hoping to replace that someday with a modern React style editor). Part of the garbage that is inherited with that 15-year-old janky interface is the fact that the only way to add extended attributes to categories, like our custom map markers and icons, is to store the extra metadata in the WordPress options table. It just so happens that is the MAIN settings storage area.

We missed that when adding our settings history feature to the SaaS plugin. Thus, any time a user saved their category updates for their locations the WordPress engine would fire the “hey, we just saved some settings” trigger. Our code was expecting actual settings not category data and didn’t handle it well.

That has been patched and is already deployed for all SaaS users.

Read more: Editing Categories and Location Import/Export

Location Import/Export

Users that have installed the Power add for WordPress may have issues importing and exporting locations. After a week of tracking down this issue, which only happens on SOME WordPress sites, we have found that the WordPress user settings for administrators can be corrupted. This causes the admin interface to not load properly. That causes the JavaScript for the Power add on (and likely lots of other plugins, not just ours) to not be loaded.

This is NOT corruption caused by our plugin code. We are not sure what triggers it, but in some case a WordPress install will start thinking it is a “multisite” install and attaches either the network_admin or user_admin attribute to a logged in user session. When that happens the “do this when an administrator is on the Store Locator Plus® admin pages” does not fire. 

What did we do to fix this? In our test installations where we could reproduce the problem we went to our administrator user profile , changed the website URL (you can change ANY data — might be a good time to update your passwords) and saved. After we re-saved our user profile with a new website URL or password everything came back as expected.

How did the user admin meta get out-of-whack? We may never know.

Bottom line, if you location imports or exports are broken try re-saving your user profile in WordPress.

This issue does NOT impact SaaS users.

Post image by Lance Cleveland

Hot Fix and Subscription Updates

Posted by lcleveland in Google Maps, Map Software, MySLP SaaS, Release Notes, Store Locator Plus, WPSLP
hot fix

Today’s update to Store Locator Plus® includes a hot fix and subscription update. The hot fix impacted some of the SaaS Professional and Enterprise users that are taking advantage of a couple of specific user interface modification settings. WordPress plugin users that have the Experience add on installed should update to the latest 2505.14.XX release.

Read more: Hot Fix and Subscription Updates

Hot Fix Details

Users that were taking advantage of one of several user interface options that are available to Professional or Enterprise level accounts on the SaaS were receiving a fatal 500 level error when embedding the map. This was related to a patch in the 2505.08 release that addressed the User Interface module from the Experience add on from being loaded too early. A code autocomplete mechanism truncated a variable in a parameter passing routine that was causing a fatal missing parameter error in PHP. The fix was minor which allowed for rapid resolution and testing of the patch.

The fix impacted both the Experience WordPress plugin users as well as SaaS users. Impacted users of the SaaS were not seeing their locator map being rendered on page.

Generate Embed hot fix testing for a client for SaaS 2505.14

SaaS Subscription Updates

At the start of 2025 we launched a major update to the SaaS platform. That update included upgrades to several foundational elements of the SaaS platform, one of which was the Stripe payment processing library. The Stripe library upgrade is mostly backwards-compatible with the hundred of lines of PHP and JavaScript code included in the SaaS payment module, but it is not 100% compatible. While we addressed major functional changes before our January 2025 roll-out of the updated SaaS software, several elements still needed to be patched.

The SaaS update released today, 2505.14, patches several key features of the Stripe interface. Many of these patches only manifest in subtle ways — for example seeing details on subscription dates, next renewal date, and other details re-appear in the subscription section of “My Profile”.

The cancel subscription interface is back online; turns out Stripe also had a parameter passing issue in their upgraded API interface forcing us to modify a function call that was unchanged for a decade due to an undocumented change to the Stripe API.

Profile and Subscription Updates In Progress

Also included in this update is the start of our continued conversion to a React-centric interface that will rely far less on outdated WordPress-driven PHP user interfaces. The updated interfaces use new React MUI components. SaaS users will start other see this roll out in several areas over the remainder of 2025. The first update was the new “Style Manager” interface with the map preview which went online a couple of months ago. This update includes new a new “Site Info” component on the “My Profile” page — it works but is not fully styled yet as we decided it was better than the prior version that was on production and thus shipped with other components that passed testing and went along with the hot fix update.

We’re continuing to work on UI/UX and functional improvements for Store Locator Plus® and hope to continue regular rapid updates over the coming months that create an improved product and service experience for our client base.

If you have suggestions or feedback please contact us and share your thoughts.

Post Image by Dirk Hoenes from Pixabay