WP Ultimate Search Plugin

A highly customizable AJAX-based WordPress search bar alternative with the ability to autocomplete faceted search queries. Users can quickly and dynamically browse through your site’s taxonomies and post metadata to find exactly what they’re looking for, and results can be loaded beneath the search bar instantly.

Features

• Searches post title and body content
• Can search by multiple keywords, and by full phrases
• Highlights search terms in results
• Option to send search queries as events to your Google Analytics account
• Facets by post category
• Can search in multiple categories (OR or AND search)
• Category options are dynamically generated and autocompleted as you type
• Attractive and lightweight interface based on jQuery, Backbone.js, and the VisualSearch.js library
• Customizable results template using standard WordPress functions
• Search through an unlimited number of user-specified taxonomies and meta fields (including data contained in Advanced Custom Fields).
• Conduct radius searches against data stored in the ACF Map field (i.e. search for posts within x km of a user-specified location).

1. Upload the wp-ultimate-search folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Add a shortcode to a post, use the template tag in your theme, or use the sidebar widget.

To use the shortcode:
Place [wp-ultimate-search-bar] where you’d like the search bar, and [wp-ultimate-search-results] where you’d like the results.

To use the template tag:
Put wp_ultimate_search_bar() where you’d like the search bar, and wp_ultimate_search_results() where you’d like the results.

1. 

   Search bar with results.

   /assets/screenshot-1.jpg

2. 

   Settings screen showing taxonomy options.

   /assets/screenshot-2.jpg

3. 

   Also compatible with touch devices.

   /assets/screenshot-3.jpg

4. 

   WP Ultimate Search being used on a music archive

   /assets/screenshot-4.jpg

5. 

   Radius search. See a demo

   /assets/screenshot-5.jpg

How do I customize the search results template?

When a search is executed, the plugin first looks in your current theme directory for the file wpus-results-template.php. If no file is found, it falls back to the default results template, located in /wp-ultimate-search/views/wpus-results-template.php.

To customize the template, first copy the wpus-results-template.php file into your theme directory. The code within this file is a standard WordPress loop, which you can modify in any way you choose. To learn more about WordPress loops, see the codex.

How do I stop my the viewport from zooming in when a user touches the search box on a mobile device?

If you have a mobile website and you want to disable autozooming on input fields (like the search bar), add the following code to your header.php file:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0" /> 

I’ve added a post with some meta fields I’d like to make searchable, but they’re not showing up under Post Meta Settings

Since WordPress uses post meta fields to track a lot of things you probably don’t care to know about, we’ve added a filter to WPUS to only show a meta field as an option if it occurs more than three times. If you’ve recently added a meta field to a post, try adding that meta field to two more posts and you should see it appear as an option under Post Meta Settings.

How do I show search results on a map?

See the tutorial here.

More Info

Help documents and support forums are available at Mindshare Labs.

2.0.3

• Bugfix for Tags

2.0.1

• Added all premium “Pro” features into free version, removed license activation
• Added Spanish translation thanks to Andrew Kurtis andrewk@webhostinghub.com
• Added Russian translation thanks to Andrijana Nikolic andrijanan@webhostinggeeks.com

1.6.1

• Fixed missing argument bug in widget

1.6

• Added built in custom results templates (post with thumbnail, title only, thumbnail only)
• Added ability to override default settings via shortcode / template tag
• Added support for ACF date field
• Added support for ACF true/false field
• Fixed bug with AND logic and hierarchical taxonomies
• Fixed cursor not appearing on initial search bar focus in Square style
• Fixed bug where clicking on placeholder text would prevent search
• Changed “include” and “exclude” fields to require term IDs instead of names
• Continuing style refinements

1.5.2

• Added cancel button next to facets in single facet mode
• Dropdown menu no longer appears in wrong location when facets are deleted
• “AND” logic now works correctly again
• Fixed bug where meta field options wouldn’t display properly
• Fixed bug caused by using Single Facet Mode with a metadata facet

1.5.1

• Values will no longer appear in dropdown if they’re already in use in the search bar
• Fixed shortcode outputting contents at top of page
• Value dropdown will no longer appear when navigating to results page via permalink

1.5

• Added ability to search for posts by user
• Added ability to confine all searches to a single facet
• Added ability to only allow facets to be used once
• Added option to disable permalink generation
• Refactored database query for faster response times
• Fixed bug where multiple parameters wouldn’t be received from permalinks
• Fixed bug where URL wouldn’t reset when ‘clear search’ was clicked
• Fixed broken “results page” dropdown
• Misc. style fixes and normalizing

1.4.5

• Fixed bug with text searches

1.4.4

• Updated visualsearch.js to latest version
• Can now specify remainder preface for text queries
• Settings will now be set to defaults on first install
• Fixed extra history state being added when navigating to results page from widget
• Moved screenshots to /assets/ folder

1.4.3

• Fixed bug that prevented radius searches from working properly
• Fixed bug that broke in-page anchors on some sites
• Misc. bugfixes

1.4.2

• Updated options framework to work with new admin styles
• Simplified pro upgrade process
• Fixed typo in installation instructions
• Fixed bug caused by ampersands in permalinks
• Fixed PHP notices on multisite installations

1.4.1

• Fixed PHP warnings

1.4

• Added radius search capability based on ACF Map field
• Added ability to confine taxonomy searches to given terms
• Added ability to exclude specific post types from results
• Added ability to search for addresses stored with an ACF Map field
• Added ability to disable autocomplete per facet
• Fixed bug where spaces in facet names would break permalinks
• Fixed bug where permalinks weren’t updated when last facet was removed
• Fixed bug where lowercase terms would appear after capitalized ones
• Fixed bug where pressing backspace would sometimes cause the browser to navigate back
• Fixed bugs that sometimes prevented premium upgrade

1.3

• Added ability to choose either AND or OR logic for query components within the same taxonomy
• Added the ability to search for posts based on their ACF checkboxes
• Added support for ACF comboxboxes
• Upgraded to EDD for licensing and upgrade
• Added settings to plugin action links
• Fixed bug where taxonomies created by plugins like Taxonomy Manager would generate notices

1.2.1

• Misc. bugfixes to 1.2

1.2

• Added an alternative square search bar style
• Added option to disable built-in taxonomies and revert to a plain text search
• Added option to restrict script loading to only pages with search bar
• Improved iOS support
• Fixed bug where tag search wouldn’t work for some users
• Fixed “clear search” icon not clearing results
• Fixed wpdb->prepare() notice appearing in WP 3.6
• Fixed dropdown items appearing outside of search bar when a term was deleted
• Added browser navigation history when moving from widget to results page
• Minified visualsearch.js script

1.1.1

• Misc. bugfixes to 1.1

1.1

• Added support for special characters in facet values
• Fixed permalinked searches rendering spaces as underscores
• Fixed bug that would cause the “no results” message to not show
• Removed iOS/Safari warning message. Update to Safari has fixed the bug.
• Added Clear Search Results button option
• Added option to disable the facet options popping up on first focus
• Added option for placeholder text in the search bar
• Fixed bug where search results page wouldn’t load on sites without pretty permalinks
• Added option to disable search results highlighting
• DB queries updated to support WordPress 3.6
• Misc. style refinements and bugfixes

1.0.3

• Updates to premium upgrade process
• Removed premium ‘teasers’ from options page to comply with repository guidelines

1.0.2

WARNING: If you encounter any problems with this update, check the “Reset options” box and hit Save Changes to restore initial settings.

• Sped up load times
• Silenced PHP notices when wp_debug was turned on
• Fixed bug that prevented option saving with some database configurations

1.0.1

• Bugfix release:
• Minified spin.js
• Moved result highlighting out of php (buggy) and into JS
• Fixed bug where warnings would be issued on sites with no eligible meta fields
• Removed debugging function in visualsearch.js that occasionally caused conflicts with other scripts
• Updated visualsearch.js to v0.4.0
• Added default styling to search bar so bar will be displayed before scripts have loaded

1.0

• Option to replace WordPress default search
• Ability to search in custom taxonomies (with upgrade)
• Ability to search in post meta fields (with upgrade)
• Searches now generate permalinks
• Supports user-created search results templates
• Many more tweaks and optimizations

0.4

• Can search post tags
• Optimized database interaction

0.3

• Added options page
• Ability to search within shortcodes
• Google Analytics integration
• Can search by multiple categories (OR)
• Option to put scripts in header or footer
• Will throw an error if search results shortcode isn’t present on page
• Loading animations
• Fixed bug where widget wouldn’t display on home page
• Misc. performance tweaks

0.2

• First public release