URGENT: production site suddenly not returning results

[optimalpartnersParticipant]

Hi, this is an urgent matter as the search is a major component of our live production site and for some reason, all of a sudden the other day, someone on my team noticed that we are not getting any search results. I did some tests and did some research online as the only real changes we’ve made recently is adding a minification plugin for JS and CSS, after reading online I found that there are some issues with using this plugin with JS minification, so I deactivated the plugin. After that, I was able to get results in the preview, but when I hit enter to redirect to the full search page, all I get is no results, but there are a number of pages showing still. This is the same thing that happened prior to deactivating the plugin, except for that before even the search preview did not give us any results. I have left the plugin deactivated for the time being.

The plugin we installed for minification is Merge + Minify + Refresh, and it seems as though we can turn on and off certain settings for merging, or minifying, or even excluding certain JS files. If it is possible for us to still use the plugin and just exclude some files, that would be great! However in the meantime, it still seems as though the search is not working properly even with the minification plugin deactivated.

The strange thing is on our staging site blogdevop.wpstagecoach.com, (you can use the same login info) with the minify plugin activated search is still working fine, same for if it is deactivated.

I can’t seem to figure out what the problem is, however, this is an urgent matter as this is a major problem for our live production site.

Thank you for your help!

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi!

The ajax search is working on my end, I just checked, I’m getting results. I see no javascript issues, except one. This code is placed incorrectly in the site footer:

<script>
//Highlighting for Search
jQuery(function($) {
   aspjQuery("main").highlight(aspjQuery(".probox input.orig").val(), { element: 'span', className: 'highlighted', wordsOnly: 0 });
});
</script>

It’s placed below the closing HTML tag, so it has no effect on the site at all. Make sure to place it before the closing body tag.

The content on the results page is simply not there. All I can see instead of the content is this:

	<!-- wpv-loop-start -->	
	<!-- wpv-loop-end -->

I’m not sure what that stands for, but I think that’s where the content should be. It’s embedded in a strange div with an ID of “wpv-view-layout-27104-CPID20041” and with some extra parameters. Maybe this is some kind of ajax page loader or something, that should load the content?
If it is, then it’s not working, or not loading anything as the content is empty.

Ajax search pro does not change anything regarding the layout, it only passes the results. Because the pagination is there, it means that it’s working correctly, the results were passed along. It appears they are not displayed because something else is preventing it from displaying.

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

[optimalpartnersParticipant]

Thank you for your help, I was able to find the error and fix it. One other question I have is that the search seems very slow. We’ve done a lot to increase the speed of our site, however, I’m wondering if there is anything we can do to increase the speed of the search. I’ve looked into the index option however because we have a number of feeds being pulled in that are searchable, I don’t think the index option will work for us. Thank you again for your help!

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi!

There are a number of things you can look into to make the search faster. I suggest reading chapter 18 of the documentation: https://goo.gl/4OeFG1

Chapter 18.1 will offer direct tips on how to make it more performant: https://goo.gl/Rn6lG6

I noticed you are searching through custom fields as well, I highly recommend using the index table engine in this case. The post meta table can grow really fast to a huge size when using lots of plugins, and it’s not indexed. Just try a few phrases without the custom fields selected, if it’s much faster, then you should definitely consider switching to the index table.

The plugin search speed however more-less corresponds with the server performance along with the given wordpress installation – usually almost the same or less as a non-cached page load. But everything is explained within chapter 18.

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

[Author]

Posts