With the beta testing phase being complete, SearchWP 4 is now available to all active license holders! This is a major release with breaking changes, something that has not happened before in the life of SearchWP.

The big picture

There are a few high level points to be aware of:

• Automatic update of a major version (from SearchWP 3 to SearchWP 4) is not available, updating to a new major version is a manual process
• Automatic updates will be available within major versions e.g. SearchWP 3 and SearchWP 4 will continue to receive their own automatic updates when available
• SearchWP 4 is available to all license holders, your license grants you access to both SearchWP 3 and SearchWP 4
• Your license key is the same for SearchWP 3 and SearchWP 4
• SearchWP 4 is a major release with breaking changes
• Support is available to assist you with updating hooks from SearchWP 3 to SearchWP 4 equivalents (Note regarding Hooks: all tags have changed, some parameters, and some functionality)
• A full Migration Guide has been prepared to assist with upgrading from SearchWP 3 to SearchWP 4

SearchWP 4 details

As outlined in the announcement post, SearchWP 4 has been in development for quite some time. Because SearchWP 4 is a full and complete rewrite, it’s a more powerful, smarter, better organized, faster search solution.

Some of the biggest changes for SearchWP 4 include:

• Faster searches (twice as fast in most cases!) 🚀
• Faster indexing (three to five times faster in many cases!)
• Reduced server resource usage both during indexing and searching
• Proper cross-site multisite search!
• Custom database table content support
• Granular control over results using Rules
• User and developer experience refinements
• WP-CLI support
• … and more!

SearchWP 4 is also an even better WordPress citizen. It does a better job at its core competency and operates on a significantly better level than previous versions. This means less overhead across the board concerning everything SearchWP does.

SearchWP Extensions

All Extensions have been updated with SearchWP 4 support. You should update all of your Extensions to their latest versions prior to updating to SearchWP 4.

SearchWP 4 has unlocked the potential for a number of new Extensions that will begin development over the coming months. If you have any ideas for Extensions you feel would help you out please be sure to share your idea!

SearchWP 3 going forward

SearchWP 3 will continue to be supported for a reasonable amount of time. Updating to SearchWP 4 is optional and not required. There is no set end of life date for SearchWP 3.

If you choose to update from SearchWP 3 to SearchWP 4 it is recommended that you first do so on a staging or development site to ensure functionality. Do not upgrade from SearchWP 3 to SearchWP 4 on a production server without testing on a staging or development server first.

Before updating to SearchWP 4 please read the Migration Guide in full.

Because updating from SearchWP 3 to SearchWP 4 is a manual process, you will need to download SearchWP 4 from your Account area (where a download link to SearchWP 3 will also be available) and then follow the instructions in the Migration Guide.

Note that updating to SearchWP 4 from SearchWP 3 does not automatically remove the data/settings/index for SearchWP 3* — you can revert to SearchWP 3 after updating to SearchWP 4 by removing SearchWP 4 and re-installing SearchWP 3.

If after updating to SearchWP 4 you would like to fully and permanently remove the data/settings/index for SearchWP 3 you can use the SearchWP Legacy Data Removal Extension. This operation needs to be done only once and the Extension can be removed when you’re done.

This is a big release!

The release of SearchWP 4 marks the next chapter of SearchWP going forward. A special thank you goes out to all license holders since SearchWP’s initial release in 2013: your support has directly contributed to what SearchWP has become. WordPress desperately needs an effective search solution that doesn’t require that your data be copied to a remote service, and SearchWP strives to be that solution for you.

Throughout the development of SearchWP 4, a number of new ideas for further improvements and enhancements have made their way on to the road map. If you have ideas or suggestions by all means please submit them! SearchWP is a customer driven product that was originally built out of a very specific need to solve a particular problem in a direct way. As a product it has only gotten better since then by listening to customer suggestions. Thank you!

Version 3.1.12 of SearchWP is now available for all active license holders. It is a small bug fix release and recommended for all license holders.

• [Fix] Issue with partial match return values in some cases
• [Fix] Notice about Deprecated array syntax
• [Update] Dependencies

In continuing the trend of making information about SearchWP 4 available, there are a couple of major things to outline in this post:

1. Custom content support
2. Proper Multisite global search

These two changes have been a very popular feature request leading up to the release of SearchWP 4, it’s very exciting to announce their availability!

Custom content support

SearchWP 3.x integrated only with content powered by WordPress’ WP_Post objects. This accounted for Posts, Pages, Media, and all registered Custom Post Types. This limitation was baked into the DNA of SearchWP itself, and the only way to work around it was to implement some sort of code solution to work around it.

While satisfying the majority of use cases, there are many circumstances in which site data is stored in a custom database table and made available through other means when editing your WordPress site. Unfortunately this content was inaccessible to SearchWP for a variety of reasons.

To circumvent the problem, some customers would mirror content to a ‘hidden’ Custom Post Type which SearchWP could work with. Other customers would dynamically pull in the content by using any number of SearchWP hooks. While these implementations got the job done in most cases, it was definitely a workaround.

A major goal of SearchWP 4 was to remove this limitation, and that’s been done! SearchWP 4 can be set up to index anything with a local database table. This includes Posts, Pages, Media, and all registered Custom Post Types. It also includes Users!

Not only that, but anything with a custom database table can be indexed and made searchable by SearchWP 4 as well.

This change has been made possible by the rewriting of the indexing process and search algorithm, and it will allow for integration with countless content setups within your WordPress installation.

How does it work?

SearchWP 4 has a concept of Sources, and each Source represents a content type that can be indexed/searched. In building out a Source a database table relationship is established, along with all attributes for that Source e.g. Title, Content, Slug, and anything else facilitated by the Source.

More information will be made available in the documentation for SearchWP 4, but the overarching rule is that if your content is stored in a database table and it has a column that maintains a unique ID for each entry, SearchWP can work with it and all of its attributes!

Proper Multisite global search

Another often requested feature that was not supported prior to SearchWP 4 is a global Multisite search that can search and return entries from any number of sites within a WordPress network installation.

SearchWP 4 can search across Multisite installations! When performing searches you will be able to specify which site(s) for which you would like results. SearchWP will handle retrieving those sites and returning them in such a way that minimizes the workload on your part. You’ll be able to mix and match searches across single or multiple sites in any way you’d like.

This is a big change that many customers will welcome, and it’s thrilling to have the opportunity to make it available. A change like this was fundamentally related to the decision to make SearchWP 4 a complete rewrite, and one of the reasons that such an undertaking was worth the effort that has been put into it.

Powerful new features

These two new features coming in SearchWP 4 will make it an extremely powerful solution for on-site WordPress search. Additional information and documentation outlining the specifics of these changes will be made available leading up to the release of SearchWP 4. Stay tuned!

Version 4.0 of SearchWP is getting closer and closer! 🎉 In preparation of the release there are some exciting updates to share. In this post we’ll cover the initial performance benchmarks that have been run to date.

SearchWP’s primary operations are indexing and searching so those are the two benchmarks discussed in this post.

Index build times (in seconds, lower is better)

The index, indexer, and indexing process have all been completely rebuilt in SearchWP 4.0. Based on the new data models in use the overall indexing speed has been greatly improved.

Take for example this benchmark with a site that has about 1,000 Posts and Pages that have content ranging from a few hundred words to a few thousand:

For the same site with the same Engine configuration, the indexer in SearchWP 4.0 is running on average in about 36% of the time it takes to run in SearchWP 3.x (about 2.7 times faster)!

The indexer running via WP CLI is even more impressive, taking only 20% of the time it takes for SearchWP 3.x to build its version of the index. That’s about 5x faster! 🎉

Another benchmark to consider is that of a larger site with 10,000 entries (again time is in seconds):

Improving the speed of the indexer was a large focus when working on SearchWP 4.0, with the hope being that a faster index build process the faster your website is displaying the best possible search results.

Search query times (in seconds, lower is better)

Indexing is a significant part of what SearchWP does, but the most important part is returning the best search results quickly. SearchWP 3.x did a good job that, but there was however room for improvement both in query execution time and query complexity itself.

Let’s examine some benchmark results when performing various searches on our site with 10,000 entries:

Note: SearchWP’s AND logic handling plays a part in decreased query time for increased term count.

Examining this results set we can observe a few things:

1. SearchWP 4.0 performs search queries faster than 3.x
2. Search query times are in many cases at least 2x faster!
3. Observable speed benefit increases as the number of search terms increases

Please note that these benchmarks are completely dependent on source content and search terms. While the source content and search terms were identical for both test series, actual differences on customer sites will likely vary.

There’s even more in 4.0!

While searching and indexing are arguably the most important features of SearchWP (and both have been improved significantly in version 4.0) there is even more to cover as we approach the release date!

Stay tuned for a few more overview posts outlining the latest and greatest coming to SearchWP 4.0 👍

The Shortcodes Extension has been updated to version 1.6.1 and is available to all active license holders.

• [Fix] Issue with handling quotes

Version 1.4.5 of SearchWP Live Ajax Search has been released, it resolves an issue with Post Types that were set to exclude from search when registered, and also resolves an issue with quoted search support as well.

SearchWP was first released in August of 2013. It’s come a long way since then! Not only has SearchWP itself as a product matured and grown, I’ve learned a ton since writing that first version.

Without waxing poetic about things of the past, I’m very excited to be able to share some preliminary information about SearchWP 4.0 and why this release changes a number of things that will require your attention.

When first building SearchWP, the scope was limited in such a way that would have it work only with WP_Post objects, because it was during a time where the WordPress community at large was (mostly) against custom database tables and heavily in favor of “the WordPress way” being adoption and usage of existing APIs. It also made building the first version much easier.

The WordPress world (myself included) has changed direction on that, and we’re all going to be better for it.

That said: SearchWP 4.0 will NO LONGER be limited to WP_Posts! 🎉 Note Users in this preview screenshot 😁

With that, though, comes the biggest announcement:

SearchWP 4.0 is a (full and complete) rewrite!

To date, SearchWP has stood alongside the idea that backwards compatibility should never be broken. It’s one of the things WordPress has done really well, as have a number of fantastic WordPress products that the community holds near and dear to its heart. That is changing in SearchWP 4.0.

In order for SearchWP to support more content types than WP_Post (and without having to write/maintain Extensions that would mirror additional content types as WP_Post entries) it meant that (quite literally) every existing model would need to change. The database schema would need to be updated, the assumptions made by the code would need to change. Terminology would need to change. The indexer would need to change.

Rewriting a code base is often frowned upon for a number of legitimate reasons, but if SearchWP is going to mature and get even better, a line had to be drawn in the sand.

Committing to this rewrite means that as of version 4.0 SearchWP is adopting SemVer. SemVer is an intentional versioning approach that better communicates what’s happening with a project. To date it hasn’t been super popular in the WordPress world, but that tide is changing as well.

If you aren’t familiar with SemVer, it means that major releases of SearchWP will include breaking changes. SearchWP 4.0 is the first of these releases. Because so much had to change in order to support what SearchWP 4.0 has to offer, the code has been completely rewritten, without regard to backwards compatibility. On purpose.

There will be a partial upgrade process (e.g. existing engine configuration) but SearchWP’s index will need to be rebuilt when upgrading from SearchWP 3.x. It will also be possible to upgrade to SearchWP 4.0 without losing your existing settings/index in case you need to switch back for any reason. There will also be the option to clean up (remove) all traces of SearchWP 3.x once you are ready to finalize your upgrade.

In subsequent posts more detail will be given regarding the upgrade process and details about SearchWP 3.x support/updates.

Technical debt be gone

With SearchWP being nearly seven years old, it had its fair share of technical debt. Moving to SemVer allowed all of that debt to be removed which has resulted in a much leaner and cleaner (and faster!) code base that can be iterated upon in a much more stable way than was possible with SearchWP 3.x.

Further, the WordPress ecosystem has embraced modern PHP which means that SearchWP 4.0 is going to require PHP7 at a minimum. This is good for everyone all around. 👍

Technical debt wasn’t limited only to the database schema and models used, it overflowed into front end code and just about everything SearchWP did. Being able to remove all of that and embrace how much both the back and front end has modernized in the past seven years is a big win.

It also allows for new (and better!) features to be included. Take for example the updated Rules implementation in the screenshot above. SearchWP 3.x had some exclude/limiter Rules, but they were limited in and of themselves and a bit awkward to work with. SearchWP 4.0 rethinks both the implementation and UI resulting in something much more powerful:

Much about the main interface in SearchWP 4.0 looks similar, but time was given to evaluating the existing workflow and optimizations have been made to ensure that setting up SearchWP is as easy and straightforward as possible.

Managing which attributes are considered for each engine source (e.g. Posts, Pages, Users, etc) has also been updated and streamlined:

There is so much more to talk about (including enhancements to the indexer and search algorithm itself 🤓) but hopefully this brief overview begins to outline how great SearchWP 4.0 is going to be. Stay tuned for additional updates outlining what to expect and when!

Version 3.1.11 is a small bugfix release and is available to all active license holders.

• [Fix] Issue with synonym partial matching not working as expected in some cases

Version 3.1.10 of SearchWP has been made available for all active license holders. This is a maintenance and bugfix release.

• [Fix] Issue with supported post type attributes not appearing in all cases
• [Change] Template conflict detection is now opt-in
• [Update] Updated dependencies

Version 3.1.9 of SearchWP is a recommended update for all active license holders.

• [Fix] Logic issue with one of the query limiters in some cases