Introducing WP Engine Smart Search<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
WP Engine Smart Search<\/a> is an enhanced search solution for WordPress that solves these problems. It takes over the default WordPress search functionality and aims to improve search relevancy, support advanced search query operators, and add support for advanced WordPress data types. The key benefit of WP Engine Smart Search is that it returns more accurate search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Engine Smart Search Search includes both a SaaS<\/a> \u2018WP Engine Smart Search server\u2019 and a per-client WordPress \u2018WP Engine Smart Search\u2019 plugin. It enables various configuration options and is compatible with various popular plugins such as Custom Post Type UI and Advanced Custom Fields (ACF).<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Engine Smart Search comes as an Add-on for WP Engine customers with a Premium<\/a> or Atlas<\/a> plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get a WP Engine Smart Search license, you can either select WP Engine Smart Search as an Add-on when signing up for your WP Engine hosting plan or you can purchase it through the Add-ons page of your existing plan. You are granted 3 licenses per site when you sign up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more information on purchasing WP Engine Smart Search, check out the WP Engine Smart Search documentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After you have purchased WP Engine Smart Search as an Add-on, you will see it available in the WP Engine dashboard on the “Add-ons” page under the “My Add-ons” tab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Click “Manage” and select which environments you would like to apply it towards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After confirmation, you will be navigated to the “WP Engine Smart Search” page where you can see all of the environments that are using WP Engine Smart Search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more information on applying an WP Engine Smart Search license, check out the WP Engine Smart Search documentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you purchase and apply an WP Engine Smart Search license to one of your environments, the plugin will be automatically installed on the site’s WordPress backend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to run an initial content sync, which will send all pre-existing content on the WordPress site to WP Engine Smart Search for indexing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Navigate to the WordPress admin dashboard and then to the “Sync” page within “WP Engine Smart Search.” Click the After this initial sync, the WP Engine Smart Search plugin will continue to auto-sync content in real-time whenever content additions or modifications occur on WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WP Engine Smart Search requires the WPGraphQL<\/a> plugin. To enable WP Engine Smart Search debugging information for WPGraphQL queries, navigate to the WPGraphQL settings page and check the setting With WP Engine Smart Search installed, we can now start looking at how to use it in the search query! WP Engine Smart Search has taken over the default WordPress search functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To start with, a basic query that would return all of the posts in a WordPress backend would look like this:<\/p>\n\n\n To limit the posts returned to only the ones that match a certain search term, we can specify the search term as an argument, like this: The WPGraphQL plugin is a good place to test search queries. WPGraphQL provides a \u2018GraphiQL IDE’ in the WordPress dashboard where you can interact with the WPGraphQL Schema in the browser. Using the GraphiQL IDE, we can paste in the search query we built and execute it to see the posts that are returned, like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Querying with WP Engine Smart Search<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can use WP Engine Smart Search to query for posts and pages, custom post types, and ACF types. WP Engine Smart Search supports the query operators To adjust any of these specific configurations to WP Engine Smart Search, navigate to the ‘Search Config’ tab of WP Engine Smart Search. The Search Config page shows options for changing your search method along with a list of models which is populated from your standard WordPress post types and custom post types.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stemming is the default search method of WP Engine Smart Search. It is the process of reducing a word to its root form or base word. For example, the words \u2018running\u2019 and \u2018runs\u2019 would be reduced to run. Using stemming can increase search relevancy as it will search for both exact matches and matches on stemmed words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The terms you search for can appear in different locations throughout the content you are searching through. In the example query above, the word ‘hello’ is in the title of some posts and only in the post content of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can limit the searchable data fields using the You can also assign different weights to the searchable data fields using Make any adjustments to the search you want and click Remember to press the “Save” button to persist any edits to the search configuration!<\/p>\n\n\n\n For an example of a very simple one-page headless WordPress application that dynamically displays the results of a search query, check out this CodeSandbox project<\/a>. You will need to swap out the Setting Up WP Engine Smart Search<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Getting an WP Engine Smart Search License<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Applying a WP Engine Smart Search License<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/1-enabled-add-ons-1024x691.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/4-confirm-enablement-1.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/5a-licenses-applied-1024x433.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nInstalling the WP Engine Smart Search Plugin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Content Sync<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Synchronize Now<\/code> button and wait for the “Sync Completed Successfully” status message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/9-content-sync-1024x527.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nUsing WP Engine Smart Search<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Prerequisites<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Enable GraphQL Debug Mode<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/18-enable-graphql-debug-mode-1024x672.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBuild a Search Query<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
query MyQuery {\n<\/span><\/span> posts {\n<\/span><\/span> nodes {\n<\/span><\/span> id\n<\/span><\/span> status\n<\/span><\/span> title\n<\/span><\/span> }\n<\/span><\/span> }\n<\/span><\/span>}\n<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/span><\/pre>\n\n\nwhere: {search: \"hello\"}<\/code>. The completed search query is below.<\/p>\n\n\nquery MyQuery {\n<\/span><\/span> posts(where: {search<\/span>: \"hello\"<\/span>}) {\n<\/span><\/span> nodes {\n<\/span><\/span> id\n<\/span><\/span> status\n<\/span><\/span> title\n<\/span><\/span> }\n<\/span><\/span> }\n<\/span><\/span>}\n<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/span>Code language:<\/span> JavaScript<\/span> (<\/span>javascript<\/span>)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/19-graphiql-ide-view-1024x804.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAND<\/code>, OR<\/code>, and NOT<\/code>. The WP Engine Smart Search documentation <\/a>contains examples of queries utilizing each of these cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSearch Config<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Stemming or Fuzziness<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/14-stemming-search-1024x307.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nFuzziness<\/code> employs a letter-per-word tolerance (“distance”) in the search terms to handle typos in the search. You can specify the distance<\/code> setting for the Fuzziness<\/code> to either 1 or 2 on the slider, which determines how many letters can be off in each word. For example, with Fuzziness<\/code> enabled and distance set to 1, the search term ‘hxllo’ would still return results containing ‘hello.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/15-fuzzy-search-1024x307.png\")
Prioritizing Models and Fields<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Searchable<\/code> checkbox. If you only wanted to return posts that contained the keyword in the title, you could uncheck all of the other boxes to limit the query.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWeight<\/code> . If you give title<\/code> a greater weight than content<\/code>, then the results containing the keyword in the title will appear before the results containing the keyword only in the content.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSave Config<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/builders\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/17-searchable-checkboxes-weight-sliders-1024x758.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSaving Configuration Changes<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
WP Engine Smart Search Demo<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
uri<\/code> defined in the \/lib\/apollo.js<\/code> file with the GraphQL endpoint for your own WordPress site that has WP Engine Smart Search installed and configured according to the steps above.<\/p>\n\n\n\nConclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n