Thanks to all the SimpleMap users out there for your patience and support!

Hi folks.  Alison has asked that I give you all an update to her  being off the grid.  I am here to do my best.

We both have been swamped this December, both professionally with projects, and personally due to the holidays.  As is such, she hasn’t been able to give Simple Map users the attention she feels they deserve.  To top matters off, for Christmas  Alison received an unexpected gift; a nasty, nasty head cold, which has kept her in bed and offline for sometime.  I’m here to say that she will be back in the fray January 4th, 2010 and doing her best to get caught up with all your requests.

Have a safe and happy new year!

The Barretts.

If there’s anyone else who uses SimpleMap and wants to be on that list, just let me know!

One page on my blog was just not enough! Now there is room to breathe—and room for you to enjoy the information and screenshots on the site, along with the new support system. Or look over the changelog to see which features have recently been added.

I owe a lot of this to Josh Jones of SexyBookmarks—his plugin’s website is what inspired me to create my own. Thanks Josh!

Please bear with me for the next few days, as I get more content entered into the support system and get a working contact form in place. Check back for updates!

I hope you have fun perusing the site, and please consider downloading the latest version of the plugin or donating to show your support. Enjoy!

• The bug preventing the database from being created is FIXED.
• The Search function correctly searches Name, Description and Tags (but not Category yet).
• You can now choose an address format for the “city” line. There are seven different format options.
• The page now scrolls up to the map when you click on a result in the list.
• Changing a location’s address in Quick Edit forces you to re-geocode before saving the changes.
• “No Results Found” is now a translatable string.
• A location’s phone number now has a “Phone:” label in the info bubble as well as the results list.

A huge thanks to all my beta testers and translators. I’ve been keeping the translation files updated with each beta release, so please send me your .po files once you’ve translated them.

For the benefit of anyone using the beta, here are the bugs I’m aware of:

• Tables aren’t created on install (this is a BIG one; it’s first on my list to fix)
• Distance conversion/calculation error—differs from Google’s distance estimate when kilometers are used
• Search for keywords not working properly (FULLTEXT error)
• “No Results Found” is not being translated
• Need to add options for the display order of address elements (i.e. putting postal code ahead of city for certain countries)

I’m hoping to pound through all of these this weekend, so we’ll see how it goes.

Please check out the Beta Testing Forum if you want to participate.

[simplemap]

If you want to show only specific categories, you just need to do this:

[simplemap categories=4,12]

…where 4 and 12 are the ID numbers of the categories you want to show. The ID number of a category is automatically generated and will be shown in the Manage Categories screen for easy reference.

Also, categories are just better in general now; if you change a category’s name, it will update it in all the affected locations. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s much better than it used to be.

Tags are done, as is the ability to search them. The search now looks in the name, description, category, AND tags.

I found a great CSV processing class that should improve that functionality tenfold. Hopefully my beta testers will help confirm this!

In order to get these changes out there, I’m not going to include custom map markers in 1.2. They are next on the list and will come in 1.2.1. I’m really pushing myself on this and I’m hoping to get the beta out in the next day or two. Keep in mind that the beta should NOT be used in a production environment, because there’s no guarantee that it’s free of bugs and defects.

SimpleMap Support Forums are now live! Click on the “Forum” link in the header to get to them. You can post in the forums without having to register, but you will have to provide your name and email address. I will leave the comments open on the SimpleMap page for now, but I strongly encourage anyone with a support-type question to post in the forums. This is my first time hosting or administering a forum, so please bear with me as I learn the ropes!

A huge thanks to Simple:Press Forum for making this possible. The plugin is so easy to use! It even gave me a couple of ideas for improving SimpleMap’s usability.