Store Locator Plus® continues to upgrade the outdated 2002 style PHP interfaces that were inherited with our WordPress framework to modern React interfaces. Our latest updates focus on replace the mix of old JavaScript and PHP code on the Location Import interface.
Updated locations import interface
Separate Upload / Import Progress Meters
The new interface has a clear separation between the file upload process with its own progress meter and the import processing. The import is designed to separate the file upload process from the file import process. The import process is asynchronous, which means the user can go to other parts of the app to continue working, then come back at any time to the import page and see how their location imports is progressing.
Updated import progres meter.
Sidebar: For smaller files with a couple of hundred of locations this may not seem important. For our customers that are uploading files with 35,000+ locations it is critical that the file upload process is distinct from the processing of the file. While uploads that large can take up to an hour, depending on the user’s connection speed, the import is more challenging. For our customers that do not use our SaaS platform, they can be running on slower smaller web hosting platforms. Importing 35,000 locations will break those servers as they run out of memory or “time out” during the 2-3 hour import process (our SaaS servers are far larger and faster than most self-WordPress sites; if you are doing large location imports you may want to switch to our SaaS platform). The Store Locator Plus® import process manages this by detecting pending timeout issues and keeps track of the current line being imported. If a timeout is imminent the import will stop on the last record processed and queue up a new import request to pick up the process where it left off. That allows the memory and processor to “take a breath” – preventing server crashes and getting those large import files fully loaded without additional user intervention.
Remote File Imports
Remote file location import interface
Remote file imports allow user to load CSV files that are hosted on a different server. This is often used for companies with a separate CMS or inventory management system that exports their locations on a nightly basis to a private URL. The remote file imports can be setup to read those remote files on a regular basis, keeping the list of locations in Store Locator Plus® in sync with external services.
This section now has its own interaction panel with related messages and processing details.
Recent Uploads – new feature
Recent location import files
A new Recent Uploads section allows users to see the list of recent CSV file imports. From here the files can be re-imported (without uploading), downloaded, viewed, or deleted.
Viewing the file shows the details of the most recent import as well as a summary of the first 20 records in the file. To view the complete file, the user can download the CSV file.
Uploaded location file details.
CSV Processing Settings
The shared CSV processing settings are shared between the uploaded CSV, remote processing, and re-import actions. The setting can be accessed via the settings icon on the top right of the Import panel.
Location Import Settings
Load Locations From WordPress
This feature is now part of the Professional and Enterprise accounts and is included in the Import tab as a new section.
This feature allows users to load locations from a WordPress site they own that has the Store Locator Plus® plugin installed.
Our June 2026 update to the Store Locator Plus® SaaS platform includes our first foray into reporting and graphs. It is a very small step in that direction, but an important step that implements the next iteration of our move toward modern React-based user interfaces throughout our product line up. Our intention is to continue to capture more data about YOUR customer interactions with the Store Locator Plus® maps and expose that data to you in order to provide additional insight for your business.
Now that we have a functional framework for updating the dashboard interfaces we can turn our attention to improving our service in other vectors, starting with customer insight reporting. In the past customer interaction reporting was available to our Professional and Enterprise plans only. Moving forward we will continue to add access to interaction metrics for all SaaS customers.
The new report shows a monthly trend of map views.
Columns marked with red highlight months where your map views exceed your plan limit. The dashed line shows your plan limit. Beneath the graph is a data table showing the total views, overage (if any) and additional charges for the SaaS service if you are over your limit.
With the initial implementation we are estimating map views based on historical data. Some accounts will not have data before January 2026. Starting in June 2026 the map views are being tracked more closely and will represent actual views. Past data would sometimes under-report views due to inconsistent card processing at Stripe which triggers the map view count on the day your subscription renews.
We will continue to refine the data collection and reporting process and will have updated versions of this report as well as new features coming out soon. Please share your thoughts and feedback as well as new feature requests via the Contact Us form on your Store Locator Plus® dashboard.
If you are still managing your own Store Locator Plus® location maps and directories with our WordPress plugin collection, ask us how you can migrate to the SaaS version and take advantage of the new metric reports and map interfaces we have planned.
Several minor updates have been made to the Store Locator Plus® application that was released this week. As always, our SaaS platform users do not need to do anything to receive the updates.
WordPress users will need to manually download and install the Store Locator Plus® base plugin to get updates since the WordPress plugin directory is not properly distributing updates at this time. Once upgrading to the latest version, the main Store Locator Plus® plugin will route directly to our update servers and start receiving inline updates (no manual download zip file, activate process).
The following items are included in this update…
Store Locator Plus® WordPress Plugin Updates
As noted in the opening of this article, the main Store Locator Plus® plugin for WordPress now pulls updated directly from our official update server. If you are on a version older than 2604.06.01, you will need to login to your our WordPress plugin store and manually download then install the new version. Note: Our SaaS platform users do NOT need to do this, head on over to the Store Locator Plus® Dashboard and login.
Make sure your .zip file does NOT have a different name as that can confuse WordPress. The file name should be store-locator-plus.zip. If you end up with store-locator-plus-2.zip (or any other version), WordPress will install multiple copies of the plugin as it assumes the prefix before the .zip extension is a unique plugin name. Not our design, that is legacy WordPress for you.
Another reason to think about replacing your self-managed WordPress plugin install with our fully managed SaaS version. (As an added incentive – we have more features coming to SaaS only with plans for better user interaction reports coming for all plan levels , joining our Settings History feature that was added for all SaaS users in Q4 2025.)
Google Map Domains (Country Codes)
In one of our recent updates, we extended the list of country codes that are supported to match the full list of 100+ countries available on Google Maps today. Two things happened with that update which we missed on release which are now fixed.
First – our Map Domain (country) selection was ordered by country codes (the 2-letter code assigned to each country) which did NOT match the order of the text displayed on the drop down menu. That meant that “United Kingdom” with a NEW country code of “gb” appeared in the middle of the “Gs” on our list. That’s not right! Easy fix to sort our dropdown list by displayed text not country codes. This was a non-functional change but makes the user experience work as expected.
Speaking of United Kingdom, apparently in the ancient history of the Google Map Domains there was an alternative country code of “uk” versus the standardized code of “gb”. Apparently Google Maps stopped supporting “uk” as a country code, which meant that any of our users that had “United Kingdom” selected as their map domain started having issues. Their country code of “uk” was not longer found, and Google did the obvious thing… use the first country code on the list of “Ascension Islands” to try to show the map and addresses. In the most recent update, Store Locator Plus® will automatically convert anyone with the “uk” code to the “gb” code on first launch of the plugin. SaaS user accounts have already been recitified.
Google Maps Latitude/Longitude Links
Another minor update related to Google and the map interface is the link in Location Details. Under each location is the latitude and longitude of the location. Google changed their map search URL which resulted in those links bringing up a 404 page. This has been resolved and once again show the location on a separate Google Maps window. This allows for a quick sanity check that the encoded latitude and longitude align with the Google Maps public service.
