Q. What is the purpose of ranking under category manager?

Posted by cici in FAQ, Our Add Ons, Professional, Results, Settings

Category ranking is a feature when you are using the Power Add-on (for the self managed WPSLP plugin) or the Professional or higher level subscription for MYSLP SaaS with the category manager. The rank is used to sort the categories which will affect the map marker that is used when a location has been assigned more than one category. Following the page ranking paradigm set by WordPress, the rank field is a simple numeric weighting for the categories. This extended data attribute for categories makes it easy to re-arrange the “weight” of categories for map marker selection without mangling category slugs. The lower the number, the higher the precedence for the map marker.

The option to set a category rank can be found under the Store Locator Plus Categories tab.

Tables and Category Data System

Posted by cici in Our Add Ons, Professional

Table

There are components of the Power Add-on that use the built-in WordPress category system involving several tables. When moving sites over or combining sites, whether it be from a staging site, or an older site to a live site , getting the data in wp_slp_tagalong to match up with a pre-existing site that has pre-existing category data (taxonomies) will be a chore.

For example,

Under a Current site , there may have been an assigned Category “A” ID # 3 at the time the category was created in the taxonomy table but Live may already be using that ID, therefore when you create a Category “A” it may be assigned ID #19.

In order to “just move tagalong /categories over” you would need to edit every entry in the “wp_slp_tagalong” table and change ID # 3 to ID #19. To do so, you need to first let WordPress create all of the categories (you could do this with a category-only import) second look up all the ID numbers of the assigned categories, third edit the wp_slp_tagalong exported data from Current to change all of the ID numbers from the “old” WordPress site to be the ID# assigned on the “new (Live)” WordPress site. If you only have 2 or 3 categories it may not be a chore but it can get out-of-hand very quickly. If you make any editing mistakes you will have various issues.

WordPress table descriptions can be found under the WordPress Codex page Database Descriptions

The two tables that would be employed by WordPress when creating or maintaining a category:

wp_terms = the category information itself

wp_term_taxonomy = the metadata that tells WordPress about different category groupings, in other words “this category is for posts”, “this category is for Store Locator Plus locations”, “this category is for videos”, etc. You will not need to export/import this but you WILL need to know what the old (Current) system assigned as the SLP Locations taxonomy ID and what it is on the new WP system. When you export wp_terms from the old system you will need to edit that export and change the taxonomy ID from what it was on Current to what it is on Live.

Tags and/or Categories

Posted by cici in Professional, Settings

With the Power add-on or the SLP SaaS professional level plan or higher, there are options to tag a location or assign a category to a location or do both.

Tagging Locations

“Tagging” locations can be done one of two ways. The informal method is to use free-form tags that are setup via the Word Press Store Locator Plus Plug-in with the Power add on. Or the (My)SLP SaaS Professional level plan or higher The structured method is to use the Store Category Manager under the Categories tab (not available with the basic plug-in or Advance level plan)

Store Locator Plus Featured Add-ons versus Legacy Add-ons

Posted by cici in FAQ, Our Add Ons, Third Party Add Ons

Q: Can you help me identify the Store locator Plus add-ons that replace the add-ons now described as Legacy?

A: Power Add-on will deactivate and replace the following:

Q: Can a store or location have more than one category assigned to it?

Posted by cici in FAQ

Can the stores be categorized by more than one taxonomy? Not multiple tags in a single taxonomy, but multiple tags from multiple taxonomies?

A: Stores only have one categorization class – the store page taxonomy.
However, WordPress Taxonomies are hierarchical. Therefore, you are able to assign all the attributes you need to your locations and use the parents of the branches to drive the user experience. The Power add-on has several UX components such as “drill down” menus that allow users to select a specific category by selecting a parent first then a child.

Store and Category Manager

Posted by cici in Enterprise, Our Add Ons, Power Add On, Professional

Store and Category Manager interface is available if you have the Power Add-on installed (for WPSLP users) or have the MYSLP Professional level or higher. You will see a tab “Categories” in your Store Locator Plus User Interface.

Under side menu MYSLP/StoreLocatorPlus menu

Once you open the Category Tab you can begin to add categories and slugs or edit existing. Set Markers and Icons per category (optional) if you want those to appear in place of map markers. A Bulk action drop down to delete some or all categories is at the top of the category box.

Settings/Search

You can choose to show the categories that you have created in a drop down menu as part of the search form. There are additional category selector options available for WPSLP premier subscribers or MYSLP Enterprise subscribers (example see Checkbox selector). You can add text as a label that will display at the top of the categories drop down menu, or you can leave blank. You can also add text for the category select box that will appear in front of the category drop down on the user interface.

Hide Empty Categories Setting

For WPSLP Power add-on users . Do NOT turn this on unless you have Pages enabled.

Settings/Results

If you want the category icons to appear in results list check off Category Icons