search function in WP, what's wrong here or how can this made better

  • rudme

    (@rudme)


    9 years, 4 months ago

    Calling all Presseroo’s on this one!!
    Sorry, even using the search function on the previous page yielded results served up by Google, i have tried out ALL available plugins incl. Google search API .. and nope, i did not find out if this would be the perfect sub forum to post this, but it seemed like the best choice at the moment.

    What are we having at present with any form of WP searching is this:
    Let me use a concrete example:
    You start out at a search box on a WP main page.
    You search for “bananas” .. but all you find is lemons (no, just kidding), what you get is a line up of post or page titles with a bit of an excerpt of it’s content.

    But, you are not ending up at the EXACT phrase INSIDE a page or posts content!!

    So, you now have to click on the category or post or page title to open the particular post or page.

    Once that is open you stand there like a poodle in the rain and ask yourself “for crying out loud, where in this long long story is my banana”?
    Now, if you are like me you can use the browsers “Find in this page” function to search for it on this particular page or posts content – and if it is not what you where hoping to find (the truth why bananas are bent) you will be ticked off and may never want to waste a second on any WordPress site searching for something in-site.

    This situation can’t be it dear Presseroo’s, or??

    WordPress has improved so much over the past 2 years or so, it’s great, but searching, why is it so far been such a lousy priority to work on THIS thing??

    If no one at WordPress cares to get into this, any individual Presseroo with some better ideas than what’s currently available, either as a new plugin or a Theme hack (not a core WP hack please, that lends itself to trouble with the frequent updates)?

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  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    9 years, 4 months ago

    *Re-reads, moves to plugins*

    Ha! The tags made me think you meant the forums.

    Try Jetpack’s omni search or Relevansi.

    Or one of these.

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=search

    Which you may have done already. Search really is complicated.

    Thread Starter rudme

    (@rudme)

    9 years, 4 months ago

    I just read some reviews of Jetpack’s omni search, no match for Google’s custom search.
    I tried the lot of plugins, no satisfaction.

    So, just because it’s the day before Christmas, which seems to good day to push hopeless hopes (!) i’ll try to layout the functions of a WordPress specific search function that would deserve the term “search”.

    1. from any search box, anywhere on a WP site, a search would always end up at the exact search term match INSIDE whatever page or post or even comment (rather than a search page template first) it’s found at and the search term would be highlighted.
    .
    2. If there are multiple matches in multiple pages, posts or comments those would all be lined up on the traditional search results page, but not like they are now – often not even displaying the actual search phrase so people still search blind -.
    WP would fetch (and highlight) the search term PLUS the paragraph or sentence around it and display this underneath the post, page or comments title.
    People reading these relevant short info bits would perhaps already there and than get the desired information, if not yet they could click on the highlighted search term and go to the specific page or post or comments thread as under point one explained and read the complete article / content of page.

    Well, i’ll keep on dreaming, but as they say, before something new is created someone has to dream it up first!!

    Cheers and happy holidays to all Presseroo’s.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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