[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

Have you seen my response above? There’s no immediate rush, but I do need to complete these items since they are mid-project.

I look forward to hearing from you!

~ Michael

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

I just wanted you to know that I appreciate your support and don’t take it for granted. I work with a lot of developers and plugin authors, and very few of them are as generous with their time as you. It’s greatly appreciated.

ITEM 2
Content-Types in Titles

You actually missed the important part of this item. I’m copying it below for you…

There is only one remaining issue:

We use the term “Subcategories” instead of “Tags,” and right now this is displaying the word Tags. Can you add two fill-in-the-blank options to the filter so that when this option is enabled we can specify the names for the categories and tags taxonomies? It is displaying the correct word for categories by the way, but I figured we should include options for both taxonomy names.

To further clarify, this is for the content-type title option that allows us to separate and display the taxonomy types. We simply need to be able to specify the names of those separate types. Without this ability I couldn’t even use this option as we don’t use the term “tags” on the site at all.

Related Question:

Well the category and tag filters are actually separate, so I am not exactly sure, you might be reffering to something else here. I mean the filter by tags option, which is a differnt option from the category filters: https://i.imgur.com/Yrrh45Q.png

You actually misunderstood what I was referring to. What I want to separate is the content-type filter option for taxonomies. If you include the taxonomies in those filters it displays a single filter option that includes both categories and tags. What I would like to have is separate content-type filters for categories and tags. As to your point above, yes, we use those filters as well so users can select/exclude individual categories from the search (we don’t use the tags filters because we have endless tags). But we also use the content-type filters and this is where it combines the taxonomies into a single option.

…..

ITEMS 4 & 5
Adding Comments to the Content-Type Filters

That is exactly what I am going to do, include it as a separate element within the content type filters. (as it should have been there already)

Thank you for adding this. When you do add it please make sure the name of the filter can be customized as we can currently do with the other options. I’ll be naming this “Contributions” instead of “Comments.”

…..

ITEM 7
Missing Label Options for Filter by Format and Filter by Categories

Thank you for letting me know. I will have to cross-check this as well, and make sure to include the options missing in the next release.

I’ve listed this here again so we don’t forget about it. I also wanted to let you know that what is specifically missing are the label text options for Filter by Format and Filter by Categories. Both of these are under this settings screen: Front-End Search Settings > Categories & Taxonomy Terms. I think the reason this was never included is because both of these filters are setup in the same screen.

…..

Including the Post-Formats in Titles (In Addition to the Content-Types)

I might be able to modify the previous code to include that in the titles as well. Let me know, if you are interested in that.

Of course I am interested! This is why I asked about it . This would be extremely helpful for our platform. If you can add this to the content-type title code that would be perfect.

I think this should be structured as another option, with the ability to turn it on/off. Please keep in mind:

– The post-format would have to display beneath the content-type (this only applies to posts).
– All of the post-format names need to be customizable.
– This will have to work with the default post-format as well (we call it “Article”).

If you can accomplish this it would be amazing (and very much appreciated)!

…..

New Bug Related to the No Results Container

That is a very rare issue, I have actually investigated and fixed some instances of it before. It happens, when the predicted number of results is not accurate, and the plugin tries to load more – but instead it gets the no-results box.

The inaccuracy is usually due to a custom code, that may affect the results count after the search is finished. I don’t recall if I suggested anything similar to you before. But if there was any custom code that may alter the number of results in any way, that I suggested, then that would explain it.

I have noted this as an issue, and I think I know a way to fix it once and for all. Expect a bugfix for this in the upcoming release.

I don’t know of any custom code we have that would affect the number of search results, but we are using a great many options in the plugin and have a lot of custom code in place that affects the images displayed in the search result thumbnails.

There is one filter we are using that may have something to do with this. It removes the default (article) post-format from search results if it’s not selected in the search settings. We had to use this filter because of some of our other configuration options. Perhaps this is responsible.

I can tell you that this issue is happening for us on every single search. I think you’re correct that it has to do with the predicted number of results. We definitely need to fix this one as it is a very visible problem. I hope you can solve it!

…..

I think that covers everything…

Thank you as always Ernest!

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

Please read my post above first… 😉

I just had one other idea to further improve the content-type in titles. The posts on our platform have eight possible post-formats. It occurred to me that it would be useful for post content-type results to also display the post-format.

It would look like this… (we call posts “shares” on our platform)

This is the Post Title
Shares
Article Format

So just underneath where it says Shares (indicating the content-type) we would display the post-format. In order for this to work I would need to be able to specify the proper name for each post-format in the title. This would also have to function for the default post-format (Article), which as we know is really a lack of any format. This is where I am worried this may be difficult to accomplish.

If this is something that can be done I do think it would be very helpful on our platform. As I said we have eight different post-formats and posts will make up the bulk of search results.

Everything we’re doing here with titles is to make mixed search results more clear. I doubt everyone will be using the settings screen (or even notice it), so having the titles help to differentiate the search results is a good thing!

…..

New Bug Related to the No Results Container

Over the last few days I’ve been noticing this new bug in the search and just figured out what was going on…

It seems that the no results container (div.asp_nores) is displaying when it shouldn’t. I’m noticing this happening when I get to a higher number of page results in the isotopic display. If I switch between various ajax pages suddenly the no results text and container starts to display behind the actual isotopic result cards. It looks really bad when this happens, and I can make it happen every time simply by going to a higher page and switching back and forth between pages. You should be able to reproduce this on your end. I may be able to hide this container with some conditional css, but this should really be fixed on the back-end.

I took a look at the css btw, and there’s no way to hide this conditionally…

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

There’s no need to apologize for the concise responses. I actually appreciate your efficiency and don’t mind short answers so long as they fully address the issues (which these did). With that said I will do my best to keep my answers concise as well. I know I tend to be very descriptive in my writing (I have a detail-oriented nature).

I have to say how appreciative I am of you providing these custom filters for me. I realize these can be used for other customers of yours, but you are basically providing me with custom programming. I pay a lot of money here for programmers, so having your help with things like this saves me a lot of time and money. It’s also much more efficient as you know your plugin extremely well, and are fast with writing functions like this. We’ve written a number of custom functions for ASP as well, but you are much better at it because of your familiarity with the plugin. With that said, my continued thanks!

ITEM 1

Indeed, and I think it’s because of the index table. I have made a change to the code, so now it recognizes the attachments and corrects this mistake.

Your corrections for this problem worked perfectly. The attachment results are now displaying the proper custom title. Thanks!

ITEM 2

In this case, that could be possible. There is also another change in the code above, so that when you se the $separate_taxonomies variable to true, then the taxonomy names will be used in the title instead.

This too is working very nicely for separating the taxonomy term titles. There is only one remaining issue:

We use the term “Subcategories” instead of “Tags,” and right now this is displaying the word Tags. Can you add two fill-in-the-blank options to the filter so that when this option is enabled we can specify the names for the categories and tags taxonomies? It is displaying the correct word for categories by the way, but I figured we should include options for both taxonomy names.

Related Question:
At some point in the future would it be possible to separate the actual filter option for taxonomies, so users can filter by categories and tags separately in the search settings? Right now it is a combined option. It would be very helpful to have these separated in the filters if its technically possible.

ITEM 3

This took me a while to check. There is a buddypress function for that, I have made a change to the code to include that as well.

Just letting you know that this worked perfectly, and the BuddyPress last active option is now displaying the proper BuddyPress time format. Sorry this took you a lot of time to figure out. I could have told you there was a custom function for that.

ITEMS 4 & 5

Yep, the comment content type filter is indeed missing as it seems. I will make sure to include it in the upcoming release, that should resolve this completely.

I’ve been thinking more about this and I believe it would be best to include the comments content type as a possible content type filter in the search settings. The filter should have the ability to be custom named like the other filter options do (we call comments “contributions” on our platform). The reason I think you should add this is there is an inherent difference between saying “search in comments” and “filter out comments.” It makes sense that if you don’t search in comments that comment type results should not display. However, it is still not a filter, and since comments are a content type it should be filterable.

ITEM 6

This is perfectly fine, I have included in the changed file as well.

Thanks for the confirmation. I have actually added similar css classes to the custom fields filter as well.

ITEM 7

Thank you for letting me know. I will have to cross-check this as well, and make sure to include the options missing in the next release.

These are just missing label options, for Filter by Format and Filter by Categories in the search settings. Thanks for adding them to the next release!

…..

And this is what I call concise answers… 😉

I am really looking forward to showing you our implementation of ASP. I think it will be the most fully customized implementation you’ve ever seen. Choosing your plugin was one of the best decisions I made for our platform! 🙂

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

I left this for the end of my work day because I knew it was going to be fun, and it sure was! I haven’t been this excited about the search in a long time. I was able to combine your code above with some targeted styling changes and it made an amazing difference to the search results. Thank you so much for providing this. You my friend are a genius! =)

All of your code is working beautifully. I only wrote down a few things to ask about…

1. This was the one bug in the code. For the code that returns the content type it is displaying the “post_page_cpt” instead of the “attachments.” The attachment search works just fine, but it is simply saying the incorrect content type below it. I wonder if this is issue is related to the code we use to forward attachment results to their parent post?

2. For the content type, is there any way to separate the categories and tags into separate types? This issue has actually come up before in the content type filters. I’ve been wanting to separate the filters for categories and tags, but you told me a long time ago this wasn’t possible. Do you still think that’s the case? Now that I think about it the content type displayed in the title should really match the content type in the filter options. Right now we call this “Categories & Subcategories,” but it would be great to be able to separate these into two types.

3. For the custom field code on the member results, I’m using an xProfile field. However, I did try the last active option as well. I noticed that this displayed an actual date and time which wasn’t really user friendly. Usually in BuddyPress it displays the last active time in a more readable format like, 1 day ago, or 1 day three hours ago, etc. Would it be possible to get this to display the last active info the same way BuddyPress does it?

4. I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before, but there doesn’t seem to be a content type filter options for post comments. I really didn’t take notice of the post comments showing up in search until today. This could be useful for us, but I’d like to have it be a content type filter (since it is a content type). I noticed you had this as one of the options in the content type title code, so I looked for it in the search results. The title is working perfectly, but there’s just no content type filter available for it. (See my update below under #5, as it is related to this)

5. It turns out that the comments search results are showing up in the results even if I select only one content type filter. As mentioned in #4 there isn’t a content type filter available for the comments. I just found that if I filter the content type to only display one type it is mixing in the comments.

UPDATE:
Ok, I see you can turn off “Search in Comments” from the Search Settings. This prevents the comments from showing up in search results. I think what is confusing here is that the comments now have a content type title, but you can’t filter them under the content type filters. Instead that is under the search settings area. It’s a little counter-intuitive. To be able to search in the comments (as the option says) means to return a search result that is a comment. Anyway, you can see why I missed this at first. Perhaps this makes more sense to be under a content type filter? Just thinking out loud here.

6. I modified your code in both scripts slightly to add in a <span> with a css class. It’s working perfectly, but I wanted to run it by you. I’m never 100% sure about those periods in the code for separating strings.

This is what I have:
$r->title .= ‘<br><span class=”content_type”>’ . $content_types[$r->g_content_type] . ‘</span>’;

7. Very small thing I just noticed while trying to change the term “Filter by Categories” to “Filter by Category” in the search settings. It seems there are no label options for either filter by format or filter by categories. I noticed that the only filter label that was plural was categories, so I tried to change it, and then saw there was no label option for it.

…..

As for the original thread, yes, there are some things left in there still. I really need to review what is still a problem to let you know. I can tell you that the problem with the cards shrinking on subsequent searches is still occurring. That’s probably the most annoying issue. I’ll get back to you on that thread when I have some time.

You’ve been so amazingly supportive in the customization of this plugin. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it! The search looks incredible in the site, and these latest changes just took it up another notch. Thank you so much! =)

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

It’s good to hear from you, and I certainly would not have wanted you to work on your vacation! I very much appreciate that you take the time to review my lengthy lists of items and write back on them one by one. I know how much time this takes and it shows how much you care about your plugin and clients.

…..

Issue and Question Regarding the Search Results Caching Feature and /asp_upload/ Directory

This is available now within the latest release 4.13.4. Under the Cache settings submenu, you can choose the database as the cache location. It will use the wp_options table for query caching.

I’ve updated to the latest version of ASP and activated the DB caching feature. Thank you so much for adding this!

My question to you now is, how do I know the caching is actually working? Where in the database tables can I see the data? Also, do you believe that caching in the DB will improve search results time?

…..

Intermittent Bug With Number of Search Result Columns (Cards)

Thank you for the video, that looks really weird indeed, but at least I know what it looks like. Still, I have no clue why, to be honest – but I think there is hope. Usually, when I can’t find a cause of a problem, the best way is to bypass it somehow.
In this case, I think adding a min-width attribute via a custom CSS to the result elements will prevent the shrinking effect.

It was a good idea to try this, but unfortunately it did not work. There were a few problems. The first issue was that if you set a hard limit on the size of the search result cards they will start wrapping incorrectly to extra rows. This happened viewing additional search results if memory serves me. The problem is that the plugin normally calculates the size of the cards so that they perfectly fit in a row. When I tried setting a min-width it prevented this from working properly. The other issue was that this will not work on smaller devices. You would need to use media queries for every possible device size. Otherwise you end up with cards that are too large for small devices. Simply put, the card widths need to be automatically determined to fit properly.

So this sets us back to having to determine the cause again. I’m still amazed you don’t see anything like this on your end. Are there any particular tests or places to look at that may help us determine the cause?

…..

Lazy Loading Issue

Thank you for letting me know. I suspect that another script may have a different version of the lazy script loaded, and that may cause the problem. I will go through the script to see if there is a version check feature in it. I will probably rename a few functions to move them to a different scope, that will do the trick.

It’s possible that we had a script conflict, but I don’t know of any other place we are using lazy loading. I figured this didn’t work for us because we have so many custom scripts that modify what images you see in search results. Then again, there may indeed be a problem with this feature.

…..

Avatar Image Size Used for BuddyPress Activity Search Results

I will have to test this in more details with the isotopic view.
I am planning to implement a different isotopic view, where the image + title + description will be available at the same time, sort of a card-view. With the current view, the main issue is the space, and that it is centered around the image. I think, that a few minor changes to the activity results + this view will be a better output for these types of results. I will look into this for sure.

What I previously wrote:

Even if the activity results were labeled as activity, they would likely display in search results before the user result, making the user result difficult to find. More importantly, I realized that the activity results are completely undifferentiated from each other. This is really the biggest issue with them. All of the activity results for a single user are identical, displaying only the user avatar and name. There’s no meaningful difference between them and thus no reason to click one or another. The only way they would be usable is if they included the actual activity item text. I highly recommend this to you as an improvement, as without this you see endless identical search results.

Please do me a favor… whatever changes you make to the Isotopic results, please make sure that the current design/view options are maintained. I’m always in favor of new display options, so long as the original options are maintained. For the most part the isotopic design we have now is working very well for us, and I don’t want to disrupt that.

With that said, your idea above sounds interesting. I would considering adding back the activity search results, but only if they were clearly different than the user search results. My idea above about including the actual activity text was a good one. You would just need to limit the number of words. Then again, it may not be wise for me to add this back because we will have so many activity results on our site. Either way, I think this gives you some good ideas for improvements, even if I don’t need them.

…..

Date Filter Bug

I believe the post_date_gmt is to store the date in GMT timezone, to make WP Cron jobs and daylight savings calculations easier. Because of that, I am not sure if that is a problem or not, possibly not, if you are a few timezones away of GMT.

Now, I think you should try a few tests here. Try adjusting the post date filter so that a post should come up according to the date, then check the post_date column on that same post in the database. Now also check the post date in WordPress (maybe it is displayed in the editor?), and if there is a difference, then it is very likely that somehow the dates are adjusted by a certain value.

If there is a mismatch, then I’m guessing that there might be a variable I am not aware of – perhaps if the server timezone and the wordpress database timezone differ, wordpress may still store the post dates in the server timezone (as PHP will return that date), but then compensate it with the timezone difference when displaying. This way, the displayed date and the stored (post_date column) are different.
This is just a theory though.

I had a thought that may be a good workaround for this problem. What if you made it so that the date range for the current date could have an offset (like one day into the future). The date range in the settings (front-end) would display the current date, but on the back-end it would use the offset time. This way if there are problems associated with time differences (whatever the cause), they can be worked around. It’s kind of like a time buffer to ensure that today’s date includes all of today’s posts. In order to make this work you would add an additional option where the user can select an offset (buffer) time in hours. What do you think?

…..

Found a Spelling Mistake in the Plugin

I found a small spelling mistake in the plugin. If you go to the Relevance Options tab and then look at the button below, it says “estore Defaults” instead of “Restore Defaults”…

…..

Customizable Header in Settings Screen Date Filters

Just listing this here so it isn’t forgotten about… ?

…..

I just looked over all the items in the posts above, and I think this is basically everything left that we’ve been discussing. We’ve managed to get a lot of things accomplished thanks to you!

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

I just wanted to check in with you regarding my post above from last week. Did you see it yet?

I’m sure you’re busy over there, but I’d like to keep this process moving forward.

Hope all is well,

~ Michael

[Michael Samson]

You cannot access this content.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

Regarding my above idea for the Activity and User search results. I came to the realization today that there were more issues involved with the Activity results.

Even if the activity results were labeled as activity, they would likely display in search results before the user result, making the user result difficult to find. More importantly, I realized that the activity results are completely undifferentiated from each other. This is really the biggest issue with them. All of the activity results for a single user are identical, displaying only the user avatar and name. There’s no meaningful difference between them and thus no reason to click one or another. The only way they would be usable is if they included the actual activity item text. I highly recommend this to you as an improvement, as without this you see endless identical search results.

I’ve concluded that it is far more important to have an effective user search. It’s more logical to first search for a user, and then if you want to see their activity to go to it from their profile. The activity search results as they exist now only overwhelm the search with repetitive avatars and usernames. They make it impossible to find the user’s profile in the results.

I’m going to deactivate the activity results feature. It’s just not useful in its present form and detracts from the overall quality of the search results. If you decide to take any of my suggestions regarding the activity results please let me know.

…..

On another note, I’m running late today with my work and probably won’t get to the rest of my responses until this next week (Tuesday).

~ Michael

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

I’m going to respond to everything in detail tomorrow, but in the meantime I have one question for you regarding the below item:

Avatar Image Size Used for BuddyPress Activity Search Results

Indeed, I have made a mistake in there, the $v variable should have been $r. This version should be okay now:

First, thanks for this fix. Just one character made the difference! The correct avatar size is now loading. When you add this fix to core please make sure to note it in your change-log so that I can remove the custom filter.

So here is my question…

Right now if I search for a user, say myself, I see mainly activity search results and my profile is also somewhere mixed in. Both the activity results and the user (profile) results display the full size avatar image. Displaying the full size avatar for both activity and user results makes sense. The only problem is there is no way to tell the difference between an activity search result and a user search result because they each display the same thing, an avatar and the user’s name. So unless you filter the search results to only display users or activity, it is very confusing.

I had an idea for a simple solution, which is to display the word “Member” under the person’s name when it is a user search result, and “Activity” under the name for activity results. I would want to be able to customize the word (using the words I just mentioned), and make sure the word displays on the second line under the person’s name.

This would make for a good feature in the plugin, but in the meantime could it be done with a filter and custom function?

I definitely need to do this because we’re going to have endless members and they will each have lots of activity. My only other choice here would be to not display activity at all. But I’d like to try and display it in search so long as it doesn’t detract from other search results.

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

It’s great to hear from you! My responses below are long, but only because I copied in many of your responses (in italics) to make this easier to follow. I’ve also double checked this thread to make sure that every single item is listed here in this post, so there’s no need to look above. 😉

My apologies, I completely forgot to answer. I usually take regular shorter tickets first, and answer yours once I got the time to do so. Recently I got a bit more requests as usual + I had to migrate the server to a newer ubuntu distribution. Nevertheless, I should have been more careful checking which tickets were left unanwsered.

Don’t worry about it, though I appreciate the apology. I’ve been so busy these past few weeks that it honestly didn’t make any difference. This is the first time I’ve had since my last post to focus on ASP.

Your support is absolutely amazing, and always has been. Thank you for going through and responding to each and every issue as you always do. I’m hopeful that we can slim this list down and solve all the issues in the coming weeks.

…..

Avatar Image Size Used for BuddyPress Activity Search Results

I see, this should be fixed by core. Until then, can you please try this custom code:

I agree this issue should be fixed in core. If you could include it in the next release would be great. I tried your patch but it unfortunately didn’t work. Instead of seeing the full size avatars I’m now seeing no images at all.

…..

Date Filter Bug

Well, I honestly don’t know. Can you please check if there is any difference in the wp_posts table between the post_date and the post_date_gmt fields: https://i.imgur.com/AEWYG9b.png
I don’t know if that makes any difference though.

This was a good suggestion. I’ve attached here a screenshot from my posts table showing both the post_date and post_date_gmt columns. Not only are they showing different times, they are showing different dates. The post_date_gmt column is always one day ahead of the post_date column. This must be related to this problem. Any idea why these columns are different and what we can do to resolve this?

…..

Featured Image Source Size Not Working in All Situations (Attachment Results)

COMPLETED

The most recent update (4.13.2) adresses this issue. It should be hopefully fine now.

When I originally reported this it was related to the image size being used for attachments and tags, which was not using the image source size setting set in ASP. The tags issue has to do with our own custom script and we are taking care of this on our end. I just rechecked to see if the correct image size was now being used for attachments, and it is. The attachment images are now loading the image size set in the ASP settings. I just wanted to let you know that your fix worked for this. Thank you!

…..

Attachment (Media) Images are Not Being Automatically Added to Index Table on Post Creation

I recall addressing this issue as well. The biggest concern was, that the recent releases support file content indexing, which can be a difficult task, especially for large files. That combined with the file upload process is a disaster to handle, so I have decided to completely remove the automatic indexing upon file upload, and instead enabling a 5 minute cron job. That way, newly added files are indexed at a slower pace, keeping the server stable.

At the moment I can’t reliably test that normal posts are being automatically indexed because of the date filter problem I’m still having. If I go and add a new post right now it won’t display in search results until the following day (so I can’t be sure it was added on post-creation). This is something I want to re-test once the date filter problem is resolved.

Regarding the auto-indexing of attachments, I agree with you. This could especially be problematic on a site like ours, where we will have huge numbers of users all uploading media at the same time. We even have a gallery post-format where one post could have many images. If all this media were indexed on upload it would overwhelm the site I think.

I like that you added a periodic cron-job specifically to handle indexing of attachments. But I am wondering about that 5 minute interval. Our site is a social media site with lots of media upload functionality. We could have ultimately tens of thousands or more users all uploading media at the same time. I don’t know how the cron job works, but I think running it every 5 minutes on our site may be a bad idea. I really need you to tell me.

Perhaps you should consider making the cron frequency a setting (just like you can do for normal posts). So you could say to index attachments every hour, or any frequency that makes sense. Do you like this idea?

On this same subject, do you think we should even be auto-indexing posts? Keep in mind we are building an enormous site that will have huge numbers of new posts every hour and day. Is there a possibility that auto-indexing will cause problems for us? Should we only be relying upon cron for this?

…..

The “See More Search Results” Button is Not Using Correct Font-Color Style on Mobile Devices When First Loaded

Okay, I believe I see the problem here. The custom CSS you use, has an ID selector ‘#ajaxsearchprores1_1’. I am guessing, that on mobile devices this ID might be different, as in some cases themes use multiple boxes (especially in menus), and the plugin auto-detects duplicate
nodes, and tries to fix the IDs. In that case, the actual ID of the element becomes ajaxsearchprores1_2, thus not matching the CSS selector.
The reasoning behind this whole ID thing would be very complicated to explain.

Long story short, try this modified version of custom CSS instead:

The #ajaxsearchprores1_1 ID is not the cause of this problem. I have checked and the ID is present on both desktop and mobile devices. I also know this can’t be the cause because I use that ID on every single css selector I am customizing in ASP. If that ID were not present then none of my custom css would be functioning on mobile, and this is not the case.

I have a special diagnostic tool that allows me to look at the DOM on mobile devices. It’s actually an iOS app that I use in cases like this where the results on mobile don’t reflect what we see on desktop or when emulating mobile. I noticed something strange when looking at the load more button.

I’m seeing this:

a {
color: rgb(66, 139, 202)
}

As soon as I disabled this above the color of the text when back to my css settings. So I think this is related.

Whatever is causing this only affects the load more button text when there are more ajax results to be displayed, so another words where this is a number in parenthesis next to the button text. In cases where there are no additional results to display the button text is using the correct color.

This isn’t that important an issue, but there is something weird going on with this. The issue isn’t related to my css.

…..

Index Table Cron Options

I recommend setting this option below the frequency of new posts. So if you are adding a few new posts every day, then daily is sufficient. New posts are also automatically indexed (enabled by default), this option is mostly for redundancy in that case. In the recent update I also lowered the number of files to be indexed per request (to only 1 per request), when the file content indexing is enabled. In that case, the cron is automatically enabled, and set to 5 minutes interval (or not changed if it is lower).
One cron request usually only takes a few seconds with the default options, basically it is the same as one request when you generate the index table, so overlapping is not really possible. PHP also hard limits the request times, so that should not be an issue.

This relates to what I said in the other issue above about the attachment indexing. We are building a huge social media site that will ultimately have millions of users and enormous numbers of new posts every day. What do you recommend for us knowing that we will have huge numbers of posts? Should we disable the automatic indexing of new posts on creation? Should we set the cron job to a greater interval? Or is it good where it is set now (every hour)? I want to make sure that new posts make it into search as quickly as possible, but without overloading our database or servers. I really need your advice on all this.

You mentioned the php limits, which also raises a concern. How will the indexing perform when the database becomes huge? We can’t have it running into php execution time limits (we currently have that set to 5 minutes for single php requests). I would think you built into the indexing a chunking type process, so that it is made up into many small batches and can’t therefore run into php time limits.

…..

I’m curious as to how the new synonyms functionality can be used to improve the search? What is its main purpose?

I would say that for large databases this is useless, as I highly doubt there is missing information, rather there might be too much redundant information.

I think we fall into this category. Our site is going to be huge and the search is going to return a lot of results. Our focus later will likely turn to making the search more relevant.

…..

In your change-log you mentioned adding lazy-load functionality. Where was this added exactly? Does it apply to the ajax results? Is it activated by default?

I have added this feature, because multiple customers requested it, where they used the auto-populate feature with over 500 initial results, where loading over 500 images at once became an issue.

We’re using isotopic results as I think you know. We also have lots of images being displayed in the results. If the images are only being loaded when each ajax page loads this is a good thing. It will keep all the images from needing to load at once as you pointed out. So long as there aren’t any loading problems this is a good feature for reducing loading times. I’m glad you added it!

One thing you didn’t answer here was, is the lazy-loading activated by default? Or is this a setting I need to turn on?

…..

Issue and Question Regarding the Search Results Caching Feature and /asp_upload/ Directory

I like the idea of using the database as a cache method, but currently this may require major modifications on the cache wrapper class. It is one of the oldest features, and it is not ready for easy modifications via API.

It should not be a very hard feature to implement though. I will try to add an extra cache table with an index, and a simple switch to the cache page to choose the method. I have noted this for the upcoming release, so it should be there.

Firstly, you need to know that our search results caching doesn’t appear to be working at all. The only file I see in the /asp_upload/ directory is style.instances.css. There are no cached searches at all. This was what originally prompted me to write about this.

The other reason I wrote about this was to see if we could completely eliminate the need for the /asp_upload/ directory. If we didn’t need this it would be one less directory we need shared between all the servers. We’ve engineered all of this at AWS, but the fewer dynamic folders like this we have the better.

The problem is that in order to eliminate the folder we’d have to eliminate both style.instances.css and all the search cache results. Storing the cache in the database would solve the cache files part of this. But I don’t see how you could eliminate the dynamic css file.

Storing the cache in the database is frankly a great idea on its own, I think. I’m glad you liked the idea. It would be awesome to see this in the next release. And yes, there would have to be a choice in the settings as to which caching method to use, files or database. As I said above our cache isn’t working at all right now with the file method. I do hope that this new DB storage method will work for us.

…..

Database Character Set and Collation

It is left like that intentionally. It does not really matter in this case, as the tables are not used for any other purpose, it should be fine.

Ok, so long as you think it won’t cause us problems. We have a number of plugins that are using the latin collation instead of utf8mb4. I just wanted to make sure you were aware.

…..

Intermittent Bug With Number of Search Result Columns (Cards)

I will try to trigger this somehow, this information might actually help, as I know where exactly to look. I cannot replicate it though.

I just tried to replicate this issue and didn’t see it. I ran a number of consecutive searches without going to new pages and this time the cards remained the same size. I’ll keep an eye out for this problem and will let you know if I see it again.

…..

Customizable Header in Settings Screen Date Filters

Just listing this here so it isn’t forgotten about… 😉

…..

Linking Attachment Search Results to Parent (Linked) Posts (Core Integration)

COMPLETED

…..

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

It’s been a long time since I last heard from you. My last post was almost two months ago and you never responded to it. Did you ever see my post above?

I’ve been incredibly busy the last two months working on all aspects of our platform. We’re due to launch by the end of this year. This was the first chance I’ve had in weeks to give the search some attention. I just upgraded ASP to the latest version (I was two versions behind).

The good news is that the upgrade went well and it didn’t cause any new problems (at least anything obvious). In fact, the new upgrade completed one of the above items:

Linking Attachment Search Results to Parent (Linked) Posts (Core Integration)

COMPLETED

The new core integration of this feature is working very nicely. I removed the filter we had in place for this in functions.php and tested this feature with the new setting. I like that you implemented it with a primary source and a fallback. This is all working perfectly, and my thanks again for including this in core.

…..

Now that we’re in the final months before launch I want to address as many of the above issues as possible. The post prior to this was a full listing of everything we had left. There were also a number of questions and more complex issues. Please look back in this thread to find those original questions.

I also have one new question for you…

Index Table Cron Options

In your recent updates you added additional cron options for the index table. It’s now possible to run at more frequent intervals, like 5 minutes, 15 minutes, etc. I was tempted to set this lower than an hour, but then I started thinking about how large our site will be. I wanted to get your recommendation on how often we should be indexing for a huge site. If we had cron run more frequently then once per hour, would this use a lot of server resources? What about if a new indexing task is not completed when the next one is ready to begin? (this could happen if the time-frame were set very low, like 5 minutes). I’d greatly appreciate your recommendation and thoughts on all this..

…..

I hope you see this message. Please at least let me know you saw it even if you can’t respond in detail right away.

I look forward to getting back to all this with you.

All my best,

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Michael Samson.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

I’m glad to hear from you. I was a little concerned when I didn’t receive any responses in the old thread. That explains it if you didn’t receive notifications. The thread was still open for a while and I believe it closed recently. Not to worry as I copied everything that was left in that thread here. It’s better we start with a new thread anyway as that old thread became quite long.

…..

Date Filter Bug

The settings in your screenshot look correct. That is exactly how I am using this.

There really shouldn’t be a time-zone related problem. I have WordPress set to PST and I also just checked the time on one of the servers. The server reports the current date and time properly, and uses UTC for the time.

I need to get to the bottom of this issue. Is there anything I can look at or provide you to help?

…..

Featured Image Source Size Not Working in All Situations

That is correct, the featured image size only affects the post type results. However, since attachments are actually post types as well (there is a sublte difference, but basically same database table), I think I can correct this, or at least I hope so.

It was be great if you can get this corrected for the attachment images. All they need to do is use the image source size from the settings. This is important for us because our platform will have endless millions of attachments, and they will naturally display in search results a lot. Regarding the image size used for the tags, we are addressing this directly since we have a custom script in place for them.

…..

Attachment (Media) Images are Not Being Automatically Added to Index Table on Post Creation

To resolve it, on the Index Table submenu, under the Advanced Options, try enabling the cron job: https://i.imgur.com/HodaCF3.png
That should solve it for now.

I have this option enabled already. 😉

So you’re saying that you will fix this only using cron jobs? In other words, attachments will not be indexed purely on post-creation?

…..

Intermittent Bug With Number of Search Result Columns (Cards)

I will try to trigger this somehow, this information might actually help, as I know where exactly to look. I cannot replicate it though.

I doubt I’m the only person experiencing this issue. I’ve seen this happen on every device, from my PC with the large monitors, to my iPad and iPhone. It doesn’t happen constantly, but under the right circumstances it does. Please follow the steps I previously provided and see if you can reproduce it.

…..

The “See More Search Results” Button is Not Using Correct Font-Color Style on Mobile Devices When First Loaded

The button content does change after the loading process, but the structure does not (should not). Can you paste that custom CSS here? I would like to test it.

The fact the content of the button changes after loading may explain this. Perhaps the styles are simply not being applied to the content after it loads.

I’m providing below my css used for the button, but keep in mind this is a mobile-only issue and I believe only affects the text color. You’ll see it corrects itself as soon as you look at the second ajax screen of results.

[code]
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore {
display: block !important;
position: relative !important;
color: #fff !important;
font-family: &quot;Open Sans&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important;
font-size: 20px !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
line-height: 20px !important;
text-align: center !important;
text-shadow: none !important;
margin: 20px 0 0 0 !important;
}
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore a {
display: inline-block !important;
position: relative !important;
z-index: 100 !important;
overflow: hidden !important;
white-space: nowrap !important;
opacity: 1 !important;
left: 0 !important;
vertical-align: middle !important;
min-width: 0 !important;
height: auto !important;
background: #512400 !important;
background-color: #512400 !important;
color: #fff !important;
font-family: &quot;Open Sans&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important;
font-size: 20px !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
line-height: 20px !important;
letter-spacing: normal !important;
text-align: center !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
text-transform: capitalize !important;
text-overflow: ellipsis !important;
text-shadow: none !important;
border: none !important;
border-radius: 10px !important;
box-sizing: border-box !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
outline: none !important;
cursor: pointer !important;
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 15px !important;
/* This padding creates a button height of 49px */
transition: all 0.5s linear !important;
-webkit-transition: all 0.5s linear !important;
-moz-transition: all 0.5s linear !important;
-o-transition: all 0.5s linear !important;
/*
* The below three styles remove all default formatting in iOS devices
*/
appearance: none !important;
-webkit-appearance: none !important;
-moz-appearance: none !important;
}
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore a:hover {
background: #00c8e5 !important;
background-color: #00c8e5 !important;
}
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore a:active {
background: #512400 !important;
background-color: #512400 !important;
}
@media only screen and (max-width: 414px) {
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore,
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore a {
font-size: 18px !important;
line-height: 18px !important;
}
}
@media only screen and (max-width: 375px) {
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore,
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore a {
font-size: 16px !important;
line-height: 16px !important;
}
}
@media only screen and (max-width: 320px) {
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore,
div.wpdreams_asp_sc.ajaxsearchpro.isotopic#ajaxsearchprores1_1 p.showmore a {
font-size: 14px !important;
line-height: 14px !important;
}
}
[/code]

…..

Linking Attachment Search Results to Parent (Linked) Posts (Core Integration)

This feature is implemented, this week I am planning to release the update. It is a major release, many new features and major improvements. I had to postpone it from last week, it is too much to test properly in a short time.

That’s great news. I’m looking forward to seeing this in core. So I assume I can safely remove the custom code from functions.php once this is enabled? Please make sure to document where the settings are for this so I can find it quickly. My thanks again for this particular feature!

…..

Customizable Header in Settings Screen Date Filters

I know you postponed this one. I’m just listing it here for reference.

…..

Spelling Error for Synonyms Button

Thanks!

No problem! 🙂

…..

QUESTIONS

A. I’m curious as to how the new synonyms functionality can be used to improve the search? What is its main purpose?

I did read the documentation actually. If I understand this correctly you can define synonyms for a keyword, and when a synonym is used in search it will display the search results for that synonym and also the word it is associated with. Sound correct?

I’m not entirely sure if this feature could be useful on a site as large as ours. I can see where this could be very helpful on a site with specific subjects. But our site is on every possible subject, so it seems impractical to use this without building an entire thesaurus. It would be more interesting a feature if the search itself had a built in thesaurus it could use when generating search results. Now there’s an idea for you! 😉

B. In your change-log you mentioned adding lazy-load functionality. Where was this added exactly? Does it apply to the ajax results? Is it activated by default?

Ok, I see the feature in your screenshot and am glad I asked about this. Does this apply to isotopic ajax results?

I don’t see how this would be helpful for isotopic results since they are always in the viewport. I’m assuming that the subsequent pages of isotopic results don’t load the images until you click to that page, correct?

I’m going to check and make sure I have this disabled. Please let me know if there’s any good reason I should have this enabled for isotopic results.

…..

STILL WAITING FOR ANSWERS ON THE FOLLOWING…

Issue and Question Regarding the Search Results Caching Feature and /asp_upload/ Directory

Avatar Image Size Used for BuddyPress Activity Search Results

Database Character Set and Collation

…..

Thank you for taking the time to respond to all these issues. Sorry there are so many, but I do believe we’ve made a lot of progress!

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

Please read everything above first…

I just wanted to ask you about something I noticed a long time ago.

Database Character Set and Collation

Are you aware that your plugin is using a latin1_swedish character set and latin1_swedish_ci collation?

WordPress uses a utf8mb4 character set and utf8mb4_unicode_ci collation. I’ve noticed in my database a number of plugins that are not using this, and ASP is one of them.

I wanted to bring this to your attention just in case you didn’t know. To my knowledge it is best for databases to have a single character set and collation as opposed to a mix of them.

~ Michael

• This reply was modified 7 years, 12 months ago by Michael Samson.

[Michael Samson]

Hi Ernest,

Please make sure you see my post above from a few days ago first… 😉

Avatar Image Size Used for BuddyPress Activity Search Results

I just came across something interesting that I need to ask you about. I have the setting to search in BuddyPress Activity turned on (we use BuddyPress). I started noticing that these search results were using the very small avatar size that happens to be next to the user’s activity. The problem with this is that the image is far too small, and ends up looking pixelated in search results.

A few days ago I just took steps to ensure that all the BuddyPress avatar sizes were properly defined. I’ve defined the thumbnail size, full size, and also the default avatars.

Is there a way we can have ASP use the full size user avatar when displaying search results for activity? BuddyPress only has two avatar image sizes; thumbnail and full size.

The member/user search results were using the full size avatar by default, so that’s all set. But these activity results are using the thumbnail image and that looks terrible. Perhaps this can be corrected with a filter? Or even better perhaps you can fix this in core?

One other thing I noticed…

This isn’t a problem, but I noticed that the BuddyPress Activity search results are also returning search results for normal post comments (which are technically not BuddyPress activity). I don’t happen to mind this as I am looking at it all as member activity, but I thought you should know just in case it isn’t supposed to work that way.

Looking forward to hearing back from you on everything.

All my best!

~ Michael

[Author]

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