Changelog
Changelog
What changes in Townsmith – Local Pages Engine, newest first. Dates are when a release shipped to WordPress.org.
1.7.0
2026-10-02
An extension point that lets a page’s structured data carry the details of the branch it is about rather than head office’s. The Pro add-on uses it for per-location contact details; on its own, the plugin’s output is unchanged.
1.6.0
2026-09-08
A custom URL pattern. Alongside flat, hierarchical and area-first, generated pages can now nest under a single parent page you choose once, with the slug built from a template using the {service} and {area} tokens in whatever order your URLs need. This is the pattern to use when you are replacing another plugin and need to keep its URLs so the existing rankings survive. Also fixes a business, service or area name containing an apostrophe or an ampersand rendering on generated pages as a visible entity code.
1.5.1
2026-09-07
Compatibility with WordPress 7.1, whose post editor is always iframed on every site regardless of the blocks in the content. The blueprint blocks and their editor styling, the Quality Score panel, the blueprint-update notice and the Elementor guard were each re-tested inside the iframe. Nothing changes on existing pages.
1.5.0
2026-07-17
A shortcode and an “LPE Service Links” Elementor widget, the services counterpart to the area links. With no area it lists every service that has a hub page; with an area it lists the services covering that area; on a generated page it lists the other services covering the same town.
1.4.0
2026-07-16
An Elementor Pro Theme Builder display condition, “Townsmith location pages”. Design one Single template with a Post Content widget, set its condition, and your Elementor styling applies to every generated page and every future one in a single click. The pages stay ordinary block pages, so the Quality Score, Sync, FAQ schema and deactivation-safe links are unaffected.
1.3.0
2026-07-16
A shortcode and an “LPE Area Links” Elementor widget for hub pages that list your service-area pages. Plus an Elementor guard: editing a generated page with Elementor converts it and silently disables Sync, the Quality Score, the FAQ schema and the deactivation-safe links, so the guard hides those on-ramps and flags any page already converted.
1.2.2
2026-07-14
A Service FAQs block. A service already carried a default FAQ set; this turns it into real expandable question-and-answer blocks on every generated page, with merge tokens resolved per page, feeding the FAQ schema through the normal path.
1.2.1
2026-07-07
A usability pass across the admin. Labelled area and service fields in place of the raw Custom Fields box, list tables showing type, descriptor, hub and page count, the Quality Score visible while you draft rather than only at publish, and clearer dashboard cells.
1.2.0
2026-07-07
An area-first URL option. Alongside flat and hierarchical, generated pages can nest as /area/service/ beneath an area landing page. Useful for rebuilds that need to keep an existing area-first structure without redirects.
1.1.2
2026-07-03
A copy editing pass across the admin screens and the plugin description. No change to generation, scoring, schema, linking or sync.
1.1.1
2026-07-03
Bundled translations for German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese, covering the admin screens and the editor panels. Official language packs take over automatically as each locale is approved.
1.1.0
2026-06-22
A Page Safety check. On the Quality screen, a plain-English verdict shows how many of your location pages are safe to publish and which look too similar or too thin. In the block editor, Twin Finder reveals the exact sentences a page shares with its closest sibling. Both run entirely on your own site.
1.0.4
2026-06-22
Two optional, dismissible prompts on the plugin’s own admin screens: a review invitation that appears only after you have published pages, and a single pointer to the Pro add-on. Both dismiss for good, neither is incentivised, and nothing is sent anywhere.
1.0.3
2026-06-22
Renamed the plugin to describe what it does, a service-area and location page generator, and refreshed the readme.
1.0.2
2026-06-19
Added the plugin homepage and author links to the plugin header.
1.0.1
2026-06-19
Generation runs are now unlimited: every selected service and area is generated, and variation blocks rotate through all authored variants. Hardened capability checks so page disposal, bulk sync, bulk re-scoring and slug updates verify rights on each affected page.
1.0.0
2026-06-19
First public release. Blueprint blocks and the merge engine, resumable batched generation, the Quality Score with its pre-publish panel and advisory gate, schema output that cooperates with your SEO plugin, hub-and-spoke linking baked into the saved markup, blueprint sync that never overwrites your edits, and the admin app.
Pro add-on
The Pro add-on ships from this site rather than WordPress.org, so licensed installs receive it through the plugin updates screen.
Pro 0.8.1
2026-10-08
A location with no phone number of its own now uses the nearest area above it that has one, its parent and then its grandparent, before falling back to your main business number, so a region’s number reaches every town under it without being typed into each. Opening hours work the same way, and so do addresses, which are always taken whole from one area. The location editor shows where each blank field’s value comes from, and now says when an SEO plugin such as Yoast or Rank Math is writing the business markup, because these details then reach the page text but not that markup.
Pro 0.8.0
2026-10-02
Per-location contact details. An area can carry its own phone number, address and opening hours: {{phone}} in a blueprint shows each location’s number, and {{address}} and {{opening_hours}} are new. An address is used whole or not at all, so a branch never pairs its own street with head office’s town. With the free plugin at 1.7.0 or later, the same details reach the page’s structured data whenever Local Pages Engine is writing the business markup.
Pro 0.7.1
2026-09-22
Sync all pages now works through the pages straight away instead of leaving them for the background run, and tells you how many it synced and how many, if any, are still waiting.
Pro 0.7.0
2026-09-18
Coverage maps can look up an area’s coordinates, and its real outline where it has one, from OpenStreetMap by name: one area at a time, or ten at a time from Pro settings. An area with an outline is drawn as its actual boundary rather than a circle. A map with nothing to draw now tells logged-in editors why, instead of showing an empty box.
Pro 0.6.0
2026-09-09
Coverage maps, off by default. An area with coordinates gets a pin, for somewhere customers come to you; add a coverage radius and it also gets a shaded circle, for somewhere you travel to. Put [townsmith_map] in a blueprint to map each generated page’s own area, or [townsmith_map scope="all"] on a hub page to map everywhere you cover. Map tiles load from OpenStreetMap only once you switch maps on. Also adds the off-by-default Local Content Assistant for rewriting a single sentence you select.
Pro 0.5.0
2026-06-17
Bulk CSV import and export, scheduled drip publishing, portable signed blueprint kits, the multi-site command centre, the signed defensibility dossier, self-hosted conversion attribution and the pre-generation saturation planner.
Pro 0.2.0
2026-06-11
The licensing layer: offline activation, seat management and subscription-entitled updates.
For the thinking behind the changes, see the journal.