Not at this time, but that is a good idea for a future update.
Glad to find that post. I was wondering for a while.
so YES, PLEASE, give us the possibility to treat cities individually. Our map has nothing to do with the US, so we won’t use States at all. Thx.
Got it. I’ve been slowly working toward making the plugin work better for non-USA users. There is a TON of legacy code that is US centric, unfortunately. It will get there eventually.
Thanks for the input.
Thanks for the reply.
On the same subject, I’d like to point out my disappointment. I purchased the Pro Pack after seeing the map in action on another website (using the plugin before the fork was made). It was exactly what we needed: A pulldown for the country, then, based on that first information, a pulldown for the city, only showing the cities of that country. I get the logic behind the radius-based model but I think it only applies to cities/states where indeed, crossing from one to the other is no big deal. It is quite different for countries (except in Europe maybe). I have 5 shops in a small country and because of the radius and default store results (25), I get 20 other results in the adjacent country, which is separated by sea(!). Although close, I really don’t think people would go to another country, ESPECIALLY when they have already results coming up in their country.
I know everyone has different expectations and shop structure but I hoped the Pro Pack would answer this basic need (based on previous versions seen).
That post is now long but maybe I can offer a suggestion.
1. Have the filters based on the previous one (as explained above. Country -> City -> Tag (tag filter could be set before or after the geographic filters depending on the user needs – I know I’m being picky here but I just try to think of different situations)).
2. IF a country/state/city shows results already, then display them and IF other shops are close-by (based on default radius) (in a different country/state/city), it could be shown after a jump in the results with a heading like “Other shops in the area…”, to clearly separate the results requested and the suggestions from the system.
Sorry for long comment.
Very happy to discuss it further if not clear enough.
@antonin – I get it. A lot of businesses are also territory based and are using the plugin for a directory v. a simple “where are places next to me on the map” setup.
However there is a TON of work to make the plugin filter data using discrete elements like “only in this country”. Not impossible, but there are a lot of moving parts that need to be kept in sync.
Even more challenging is the cascading pulldowns. They are very cool but require a decent amount of AJAX which means a lot of front-end JavaScript and back-end listeners. If you read the threads about SLP you will know JavaScript is a wild beast with WordPress thanks to the inconsistent nature that themes use to manage script loading. If only everything was following WordPress 3.3 best practices we could take some shortcuts. Unfortunately a BIG number of sites would break if I don’t take the “long way” to get these things done.
All great suggestions and things I would like to see added, but I must do the work people are paying for first. The custom work & paid support lets me feed the family. I even do that before the “fun stuff” I want to see in the plugin for my own selfish reasons.
Someday I’ll get to these things. Hopefully in the not-so-distant future.
Thanks for the lengthy reply.
I get the point and if I bought the Pro Pack, it’s because I couldn’t do it in-house, so I get the complexity you mentioned and how to make it flexible enough for everyone to use.
However, for the cascading pulldowns, it seems it was the way it worked in previous versions (2.0.3 of Store Locator Plus for the one I saw). Was it removed because of the javascript issues you mentioned?
SLP never had cascading pulldowns. It has a separate country pulldown and city/state pulldown but are not directly related. It also never used that as a discreet filter, it has always just used the pulldown selection to type in an address for the user, such as “Denver, CO”. They were originally meant to be “guiding hints” to the users to give them a clue where your locations might be.
