Latest News

Due to some changes in the availability of third party services two functions are currently not available in Blipstar - Distance by driving direction, and Autocomplete. Apologies for any inconvenience caused - please contact us if you have any questions.

We haven't posted anything for a while so just wanted to say hello! Nothing major to report really. We're still working away on a few new features we hope to release later on in the year. As an aside, Blipstar has been powering store locators day in, day out for 16 years now this August which is pretty cool.

Wishing all our users a very Happy New Year! Here's to a hopefully more normal year in 2022!

Two features in Blipstar have just been enhanced - tags and remembering a user's search.

With tags you can now display them in the search interface as a drop-down menu, a series of checkboxes, or a set of radio buttons.

The drop-down menu and radio buttons allow the user to select a single tag, whilst the checkboxes allow multiple tags to be selected. In addition we've expanded the functionality for the second group of tags (if you have them defined). The full range of tag options, such as labels, ordering and defaults are now available for the second tag group (previously the options were very limited).

If you've selected the option to store a user's search (so when they next come back to your site to do a search the previous search parameters are pre-populated) this was formerly implemented by storing cookies. We have now overhauled the store locator so it no longer uses cookies to do this. Instead it uses something called LocalStorage. Like its name suggests this only stores the search data on the user's device, unlike cookies which are sent in the header of every request to a server. Rightly or wrongly cookies have garnered a bad reputation over recent years, so it seemed sensible to retire their use in Blipstar.

We've added a new feature that enables you to scale store location icons based on the map zoom level.

If you have lots of locations being displayed on the map it might look better if the icons are shown smaller when zoomed out (otherwise the map looks too busy). You can now achieve this in Settings > Icons > Icon scaling on zoom. You specify how small you want the icon to appear when zoomed out and the zoom range within which scaling occurs.

We hope some of you find it helpful - as always send us any feedback!

It's fair to say 2020 hasn't been a great year for many people. Thankfully it's now history and things should hopefully improve in many ways during 2021, not least due to several vaccines coming online.

However your last twelve months panned out, we wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Version 5.0 of the Blipstar store locator viewer has been released today.

Various optimizations have been carried out to make it faster and more efficient. As it has been a fairly major upgrade do let us know if you notice any glitches on your locator - it has been extensively tested but a bug or two might have slipped through the net.

Hope you are keeping safe out there.

You've always been able to export your location data from Blipstar but the option is limited to when you are logged in to your account. Wouldn't it be nice if you could offer a similar function but for users of your website?

Well now it's possible! You can offer a link on your site to download your current data, making it available to everyone. It is possible to filter the export by country and tag, and also specify which fields are included in the download (in case there are certain fields you want to remain hidden from public view). To create a url for use on your site you need to log in and go to Locations > Export and click 'Create a download link'.

We're pleased to announce Blipstar's got a new look to keep it fresh and modern.

The logo has been revamped and the site generally smartened up. We'll be making further tweaks over the next few weeks so keep an eye out.

Hopefully you like the new look and feel - we've kept all the underlying functionality the same so you should not have any issues in navigating the site and managing your store locator. If you have any issues then just let us know.

Blipstar now uses only secure (HTTPS) connections.

Previously it was possible to access Blipstar by HTTP or HTTPS but the non-secure/encrypted version is no longer available, and all HTTP requests will be redirected to secure equivalents.

Access to accounts always required a HTTPS connection and this recent change is for improved privacy, security and simplicity whilst navigating the rest of the site. Accordingly all Blipstar urls now start with https://blipstar.com.

We have upgraded the Blipstar-Zoho integration to use the latest version of the Zoho CRM API.

It's now even easier to connect to your Zoho account and import location data. The advanced Filter field allows you to define what locations you want to import using the Zoho COQL, which is similar to MySQL.

To import data from Zoho log in to your Blipstar account, go to "Locations", click on "More options" and then select the Zoho option. Then follow the instructions to complete the process.

Happy integrating!

If you use tags in your locator and allow users to select more than one (using checkboxes) we have just added the ability to select certain tags by default.

You can select all, none or specific tags by default, and the new option is available in Settings > Tags (if you have the Multi-selection option enabled).

We'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2020, a new decade no less! Thank you to all our users, both old and new, for using Blipstar.

In other news we've revamped the CAPTCHA (for accounts that have the option selected). Before the user had to click on pictures but now it uses a clever behind the scenes algorithm to determine whether it's a human or bot. No changes are needed - the new system is operational, it just means a better user experience for your customers.

See you next year!

When adding links to your store for things like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram it can be useful to test it (to make sure it is correct).

So in the Store editor page we've added little "Test" links for each URL text box to do just that!

Geocoding is never going to be fun, but it can be made more convenient.

If you're uploading locations the geocoding process now takes place in the backgroud, so you don't have to hang around while it processes and can get on with more important things.

Once complete, you'll get an email saying it has finished. Simple!

Hope you have a prosperous 2019! The Blipstar team.