Latest plugin on WP Engine – missing results, frontend search settings broken

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Hi

We’ve been successfully using your ASP plugin on a client’s site since 2015. Recently, we’ve updated the site, and moved from Mediatemple to WP Engine for hosting.

When deployed from staging to live, the plugin installed on staging (4.8.1) breaks the site (according to WP Engine support, who disabled the plugin to temporarily fix the problem). WP Engine support suggested that the plugin was working on staging because that is a cache-less environment, whereas live is not.

I installed the latest version of the plugin (4.10.3) on the live site to address the problem, which it does to some extent. Once we had made some style changes to accommodate the slight differences in markup that are output, the search works superficially well, but with a few key problems:

– we’re using the index engine, which reports 108 items in the index (that matches the number of posts we want to search – a custom post type called ‘Catalogue’), but only 101 results are returned (the limit is set to 200) when no terms or other settings are used

– the search settings, which are active in the front end and comprised of various checkbox options, no longer have any impact on the search result. On staging, selecting / deselecting these options impacts the search result

– certain posts we know to exist will no longer be returned as results but, oddly, the are suggested by title in a ‘no results’ search result

The login details provided in the support form here will also give you access to the staging version of the site running the older plugin as reference. The URL is http://unicorngcb.staging.wpengine.com.

This site is an active, private intranet for an international charity. They’ve given us permission to give you access, but please treat the site confidentially and let me know if your investigation will cause any disruptions.

Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer. I’ve tried everything I can think of, working in the limited live environment (as I cannot potentially replicate the problem on staging without changing the plugin, which would lose our working example for this support exercise).

Best

Paul

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi Paul,

I’ve tried to log-in with the given details, but it says that the user name is incorrect. Can you please check that?

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

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Hi Ernest

Username is: unicorngcb

for the live site at http://gcb.worldanimalprotection.org/wp-login.php

Thanks!

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi!

Unfortunately I’m still getting an incorrect login details error message: https://i.imgur.com/RCawCO6.png

I’ve also tested the SFTP details, but that does not work either, I’m getting this error message:
[SFTP] Connection failed : Timeout while connecting to unicorngcb.sftp.wpengine.com:22
This error usually means that either the address, or the port number is incorrect. I’ve tried via SFTP (port 22) and FTP protocol (port 21) as well, but none of it responds. Do I have to use a different port by any chance?

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

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Hi Ernest

I don’t know why you’re unable to login / access via SFTP. Apologies for this.

I’m going to make a new user account for you on the live and staging sites, so that should solve the problem with regard to access to the site / CMS. Is there an email address for you that I can use when making the new WordPress user accounts?

I’ll double check the SFTP details now. It could be a different port.

Best

Paul

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Hi

Ok, the SFTP port is 2222 – that should solve the problem with that!

Please let me know about the email address (see last message) so I can set up a new user account for you on the live and staging sites.

Best

Paul

ps. thanks for your help and patience, much appreciated

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

You cannot access this content. Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Done! You should get two account emails, one for live and one for staging.

Best

Paul

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi,

Thanks, it is working now.

Results count issue
It is because of the custom field filters. If I remove the filters and try then, it shows all of them. That means that the remaining 5 items most likely not match any of the filter values.

Category filtering issue
It’s very likely to a misconfiguration on the Frontend search settings -> Advanced panel. Currently it will display any result if any of the filter values match from any box, at least one time. I would rather recommend a more strict configuration, like the default one: https://i.imgur.com/Xg3hLcA.png
I’ve made this change, it should be more responsive to filtering now.

Results not returned
I’m suspecting this is related to the first issue, as there are 5 posts not matching any of the filters at all, so they are not returned. The suggestion script does not take filtering into account (due to performance related issues).

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

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Hi Ernest

Much appreciated – I’ll check this out today and discuss with my client, then let you know if I have any further questions.

Best

Paul

[zerofeepaulParticipant]

Hi Ernest

I’m not sure I understand why the staging version of the site, with the older plugin running, works with the same settings (or what were the same settings before you tweaked the live version ones while looking into this).

On staging:
http://unicorngcb.staging.wpengine.com/catalogue/

a search for ‘proposals’ will produce results with all checkboxes selected.

On live:
http://gcb.worldanimalprotection.org/catalogue/

the same keyword search with the same checkboxes selected will not.

Essentially, the staging version of the plugin / search works fine, but the live version with the newer plugin installed does not behave the same way, with the same contents.

Best

Paul

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi,

The problem is that it’s effectively not possible to compare the two plugin versions to one another – as 4.8.1 and 4.10.3 are actually 16 releases apart. They are fundamentally different, as between those 16 releases was a major improvement in search classes, many files were removed or replaced. This affects changes in queries, back-end options regarding taxonomy terms etc.. The plugin tries to count for all cases when updated, and tries to maintain the compatibility, but jumping 16 releases at once is a huge leap.

Anyways, I’ve looked up the logs, and checked for options consistency, luckily everything is fine, no errors there. The reason why the live version did not yield results for the ‘proposals’ term, is that I have accidentally flipped the custom field logic option from ‘OR’ to ‘AND’ when checking it before my previous reply: https://i.imgur.com/elL4e9e.png
I’ve changed that back, now the same results should appear again for that phrase. I believe it also fixes the case where not all results are initially displayed. I’m pretty sure that should work now as well. Sorry about that, I do make mistakes oftem times 🙂

You can still excpect some minor differences here and there, but overall I recommend using the newest release (4.10.3), it’s more efficient, and lots of known issues were fixed since the 4.8.x releases.

Let me know if you find anything else.

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

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