Home » Blog » News » Tour Operator 1.2.0 Released

Tour Operator 1.2.0 Released

—

by

Ash Shaw
in

Tour Operator plugin 1.2.0 features significant updates, including TO Maps integration, bot blocker to reduce map fees, mobile UI improvements, and compatibility with form builders like WPforms, Caldera Forms, and Gravity Forms.

Tour Operators V1.2.0

The Tour Operator plugin is part of our core software library. We have worked closely with a variety of large tourism corporations over the years to develop a plugin that suits the needs of all online Tour Operators.

Since the release of Gutenberg for WordPress we have made our plugin Gutenberg compatible, with further advancements underway.

We have just finalised our latest version of the plugin, and are proud of all the functionality and usability that it has made available! 

To list a few of our updates:

Integrating TO Maps extension & creating a Bot blocker

This update is quite major and saves our clients a lot on their Maps billing.

As of 2019 you are required to have an active account with Google Billing, and you are charged per map view by Google when a user interacts with a map). To stop unnecessary billing, we did the following – 

  1. Pull our Tour Operator Maps extension into the Core Tour Operator Plugin. This gives every user of the Tour Operator plugin the ability to have functional maps.
  2. Created a bot blocking script – this stops any bots (fake users) from being able to see your maps. So no unfair fees! 
  3. We have added a click-to-view option on our maps, where a user simply clicks on the map placeholder, and the real map will load. This stops unnecessary fees from uninterested parties. 
To prevent unwanted calls to the API you need to click to display the map

Mobile UI Updates 

Since Google announced it will be indexing on a mobile-first basis, we have been converting our styling to follow suite. This means styling with the latest Flexbox module and Bootstrap framework. These coupled with mobile-first styling and SASS to CSS pre-processing, we are ahead of the game. 

Form Integrations

We have updated the Tour Operator plugin to be compatible with the popular form builder plugin WPforms. You can now use any one of the following third-party form builder plugins with our Tour Operator pre-built contact options. 

  1. WPforms 
  2. Caldera Forms
  3. Gravity Forms
Changelog 1.2
* Fix - Hiding the banner title on regions when the map is set to output there.
* Dev - Made sure the regions also move the map to the banner when the setting is activated.
* Dev - PHP Class updates.
* Dev - Removing old templates.
* Dev - Integrated the TO Maps plugin into TO Core.
* Dev - Added in an option to disable the maps.
* Dev - Added in a desktop and mobile map placeholder setting.
* Dev - Added in the bot blocker function for google maps requests.
* Dev - Integrated the TO Videos plugin into TO Core.
* Fix - Fixed the Room Section not collapsing on mobile.
* Fix - Fixed the collapse section title colour on mobile.
* Dev - Added in the region taxonomy for housing the Continent Sub Regions.

Tour Operator Search 1.2.1 & Extension Updates

The Tour Operator Search extension has been remodelled for a better User experience, but has also been updated with some fantastic functionality. 

Search URL rewriting

The URL rewriting feature allows you to customise your search for all your post types. You can now have an advanced search specific for your custom post types. This will not interfere with your global search, and can be used on your custom archive or singles.

Mobile Search Functionality

Continuing with our effort to make our Tour Operator software as mobile friendly as possible – we redeveloped our layout for our mobile search results.

  1. More accessible sidebar location – now the sidebar is accessible via a smooth dropdown toggle, giving users more freedom to roam. 
  2. We added the page filter and the search bar to the mobile results for easier accessibility.

FacetWP Integration

We have also updated the integration between our TO Search extension and FacetWP, keeping up-to-date with their latest Query changes.

FacetWP Integration

We have also updated the integration between our TO Search extension and FacetWP, keeping up-to-date with their latest Query changes.

The Tour Operator search results grid is much improved:

Changelog 1.2.1
* Dev - Fixed the wp_kses error causing the archive facets not to load.
* Fix - Adding the correct class to the search facet.
* Dev - Improving search styles.
* Dev - Adding filter number to search results on mobile.
* Dev - Adding search bar to mobile.
* Fix - Restricted the post type labels to the global search only.
* Dev - Updating the FacetWP Queries.
* Fix - Fixing footer bar.

The following extensions were tagged as minor releases in the previous fortnight, here are the release notes for each extension:

Tour Operators Reviews

Changelog 1.1.1
* Dev - changing the width of the thumbnail
* Fix - fixing the layout
* Dev - fixing the reviews schema output

Tour Operators Team

Changelog 1.1.1
* Dev - Removed API Call Error

Tour Operators Specials

Changelog 1.2.1
Tour Operators Specials
Dev - Updating dependencies

Upcoming Wetu Importer Release

We are excited to announce we will soon be releasing a UI-based update for the Wetu Importer Extension.

This release completely remodels the usability of the importer, with an advanced and easy to use interface. For all you Wetu users, this is something to look forward to!

Share:

Tags:

Recent Posts