Autocomplete

[zealthParticipant]

Hi,

We’ve utilized your WP Ajax Search Pro for awhile and love it. We are hoping to get some feedback regarding the Google Autocomplete feature.

If you go to http://ewfiber.com and scroll down you will see a search utilizing Ajax Search Pro. If you type an address in downtown Chicago it pulls results from the posts in the database. If no results are found it displays a notification and link to a contact form.

We are hoping to utilize the autocomplete feature so as a user is typing an address it attempts to look for and display the full address, making it easier for visitors to find the property.

I’ve tried enabling the autocomplete and added the Google option but it doesn’t really do anything.

Can this be accomplished with Ajax Search Pro?

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi!

Thank you for your kind words!

Google autocomplete unfortunately only gives generic results back, based on the words typed in. It has no connection with your site, it just basically a keyword information sent to google, and it sends back other possibilities.

You can however change the autocomplete source to your post titles, which might be what you are looking for. On the Autocomplete & Suggestions -> Autocomplete panel, try selecting the “Post Titles” option instead of “Google Keywords”: https://i.imgur.com/XwOanwe.png

That way if the search phrase matches the beginning of any post title, it should display the full title as the suggestions. Please note that this may cause a bit of performance drop. In that case, you can optimize the performance by this guideline from the documentation.

Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

[zealthParticipant]

Hey Ernest,

Yes we’ve utilized both Post Title and the Google Keywords for the autocomplete.

I’ve gone through all details regarding optimizing performance and it still seems too slow. It takes a solid 5-6 seconds to display results and the autocomplete is too slow, you have to type very slow for it to be of any use.

We have about 850 posts in the WordPress database and are using the Index table, but still painfully slow in comparison to your demo’s which are lightning quick.

Let me know if we can do anything to resolve this.

thanks!

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi!

From what I can see, I highly suggest disabling the Trigger search when typing? option, as described within the 1 high priority point in the guideline I linked previously.

I’m guessing the server you are running is on a shared environment, or running a decent amount of plugins (or both). Shared hosts have a parallel execution limit, which delays each request triggered by typing. Disabling the triggering on typing prevents to send repetitive requests until the user hits enter, or the search icon, saving tons of resources.

All the demo sites and this site together run on a very cheap 10$/month VPS droplet on Digial Ocean servers – but since it’s unmanaged, it does not have an execution or shared memory limit like most shared hosting plans. This allows a much faster, and unmetered parallel execution. On the downside however, the host does not help, and is not responsible for setting up the environment.

I can also suggest two other caching methods, which work flawlessly for me personally:
– PHP opcode cache – this is enabled on all php 5.5+ installations. I highly recommend updating to PHP 5.5 if you are not using it yet. In case of shared hosts, you might have to contact your server administrator to help you with that.
– Memcached with W3TC – it’s nother fantastic caching method, for Database queries. PHP-memcache is installed on most servers. If you have SSH access, you can install this on your server, or ask the server administrator to do it for you.

I hope this helps!

Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

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