[optimalpartners]

Hi, Yes, here are the names of the custom fields, they are created and stored in the WP Types plugin.

For consultants:
first-name
specialties
consultant-experience
resume (This I have as a placeholder, depending on what we can do with search we may or may not use it. We were thinking of having a hidden field that can be searched, but we may decide against that)

For peers:
first-name (same field as for consultants)
university
specialties (same field as for consultants)
consultant-experience (same field as for consultants)
resume (same field as for consultants)
email

The fields are very similar, but the actions for the user are different and we are sorting them separately so they appear differently in the site. Also, the fields must be displayed using shortcodes (annoying, but just how WP Types works) and so rather than pasting the shortcodes into every main body section for every peer and consultant, we are using the Content After Posts plugin to display the style classes and shortcodes on every one of those posts (“after” the main–blank– content) despite the fields being in the editor for each individual post.

Also prior to the last message, (Dec 16) I had submitted a support request and some of those issues are extremely urgent as we are getting code at the top of the screen and also having an issue with our hosting provider and I think that issue may be causing it. Also several other configuration questions if you could respond to those as well.

[optimalpartners]

Hello again, I’m working on adding additional types of content to our blog and as I’m in the process of adding them, I’ve also done a bit of testing to search for the new content and I’m unable to search for them in the way I’d like.

A bit of background. I’m creating custom post types for “consultants” and “peers” each have similar, but slighty different custom fields associated with the post types, and similar taxonomies (taxonomies haven’t been fully decided on yet) So in order to avoid copying the formatting for every new consultant and peer, I’m using content after posts so that the same information (pulled from custom fields for each entry) to pull the shortcodes from the custom fields. I’m able to search the title, however I need to somehow search those custom fields and they do not appear in the search plugin settings. I also tried to have it run the shortcodes and not strip them from the results, but that also did not seem to work. I’m hoping there’s a way to search through the content in these fields on these pages as it will allow us to enter them in a much cleaner way. The alternative is entering all of the same fields in a main block of text.

Thank you for all your help!

[optimalpartners]

Hi, Thanks again for all the help! Just a few other things I’m noticing as I’m changing some of the settings.

1. Is it possible to re-order the filters?
2. I’d like to rename the filter “Jobs” to “Jobs Feed” Jobs is a category of the newsfeeds CPT.
-Also with Jobs, from my understanding, if you select jobs, you must also select Newsfeeds since jobs is a category within newsfeeds. However is there any way we can make it so they do not need to select both?
3. I’m wondering if it’s possible to have the filters be remembered for the next search that a user performs. This is something that my supervisor says is highly important and may not have filters as an option for users.
4. Also since the last changes you made, we’ve noticed code comes up at the top of the page when we do a search (see screenshot)
5. We did a search for “higher” and selected only Other Pages as a filter and on page 3 we are getting a 404 error, I think this is similar to an issue you said was with wordpress but you had applied a fix.
6. Also I was looking into the index table option, and I’m wondering if it would work for us as I read that the index table allows for a faster search. My concern is that with the feeds being pulled in, the index table may not get updated properly, especially as not too long ago we were having several issues with our caching plugin affecting some of our dynamic content.
7. Also, sometimes when searching only under “Articles & Resources,” I still get Page results in the preview. (See screenshot)
8. When we display results from newsfeeds, the description displays in a single paragraph tag, where it should really be separated into several parts. I looked into the plugin that allows them to be pulled in, and they actually don’t allow for feeds to come up in search by default, and they do not have an option to change it. The support for the rss plugin told us we need to create a custom search template for the rss posts. To me, this means that they are showing in search because I selected in this search plugin to search those types of content–which is exactly what I want, but it seems as though this plugin is somehow stripping the html that is normally part of those entries–the text is all jumbled, the source, date, and author is lumped in with the rest of the description, and we need to be able to separate them and style it all separately. (see screenshot)
9. Lastly, for some reason, some of the behind the scenes types are showing in search results. For example, “Types Groups” “Content after Posts” “Feedback” “Views” I think these are all things from other plugins. These are the only ones I’ve found in the results, but I’m concerned that there could be others. I looked through all of the options for how to exclude things from search and I’m unable to specify for any of these to not show.

[optimalpartners]

If you could help with the issues in these last couple of posts as soon as possible that would be great, as we need the filtering sorted out before we add this plugin to our production environment, and ideally we would like to do that in the next few days/week.

Thanks again! I really appreciate it!

[optimalpartners]

To make things easier with the selector thing,

For now I won’t have the CPTs listed, so I will need to have:
Feeds (post type)
Products (post type)
Free Project Resources (post category)
Articles (post category)
Jobs (feed category)
But I’d like them to be in one clean list rather than separated by “Post Type” “Categories” or “Feed Categories” Just like how I don’t want someone to have to click on both feeds and jobs in order to display the jobs (all jobs are a type of feed)
Then in the results, I’d like them to be sorted as:
Pages
Articles
Free Project Resources
Feeds
Products
Jobs
Rather than Posts, Pages, Other…. Or Articles, Free Resources, Other

Then once I have all of my CPTs saved and original posts removed, I’d like to have
Articles (CPT)
Resources (CPT)
Consultants (CPT)
Feeds (post type)
Products (post type)
Jobs (feed category)
And then in the results, I’d like them sorted as:
Pages
Articles
Resources
Feeds
Products
Jobs

I hope this helps clarify what I tried to explain above.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by optimalpartners.

[optimalpartners]

Thank you for clarifying how the filters work.
I’ve been trying several things, as I’d ideally like to have the filter selectors be: Articles (New CPT), Resources (New CPT), Consultants (New CPT), Feeds (Feed Type CPT), Products (Product CPT), Jobs (Category of Feed CPT)
Note: Currently Articles and Resources only have 1 in each as over the next few weeks/months I’ll be moving all old posts into custom post types so I can organize better with taxonomies. Also, I have not created the Consultants post type yet.
Right now however, I’m unable to get search results for either of the article or resource CPT (“The Advantages of Hiring Team Members with Non-IT Backgrounds” and “Free Project Management Courses” respectively)
Note: If you try to search for them, both of these have admin as the author, as they are copies of posts and I have not removed the original posts categorized as article or free project resource due to the testing I’m doing with CPTs as mentioned).
In trying to figure out how to get the selectors I want, I tried to remove the post and page filters to allow users to filter by category and post type, however if for example I’d only like to search for products, I noticed that pages and posts still showed up. I’d like to be able to select a checkbox and for only those things to show up. Similarly, the other issue here is because Jobs is a category of Feeds, the user must select both feeds and Jobs. I’d like for them to just select Jobs and for those items to show up. (I also don’t like how Jobs has to be displayed separately from the others in the selectors view.) I think the categories of selectors should use an OR rather than an AND operator that way the user can select a category, but not have to select a post type.

Also, I was trying to see the difference between using the regular engine and the index engine, and then it didn’t seem like my feed items were coming up in search. (The general feed pages came up, but not the individual feed posts) I was also afraid that even with the index extending itself on publish that the feed items wouldn’t be a part of that since they are not stored as posts or pages, and instead they are stored within the WP RSS Aggregator plugin. Because I was unsure of this and didn’t like the way the individual feed items were not showing in the results, I reverted back to the regular engine and removed the index table. However, now I am not getting any RSS feed items (other than Jobs) or custom post types (Resources, or Articles as mentioned above) in my search results. I looked through all of my settings and can’t figure out why neither the feed items or the articles and resource post types will come up for any of my searches – I went to my feed pages and searched for various items that are currently listed and got no results.

Another thing is, I can’t seem to determine if displaying by category or by post type is better. Similar to above, I’d like the preview results to display grouped as Pages, Articles, Resources, Feeds, Products, and Jobs. And I’ve noticed that other than Jobs, I’m unable to search for any feed items, or the CPTs of articles and resources as mentioned above. I realize it’s a bit confusing right now because the CPTs were being tested in this development environment, but I want to make sure I have the search fully configured before I move it into my production environment.

Thank you for the Highlighting info, it worked!

As far as the pages not showing any content in the preview, I tried adding an excerpt to one of my dynamic pages and it displayed in the main search results, but not in the preview results. Not sure if there’s any way to fix this. I know I have it set to search the excerpts.

Also, thank you for the information about distinguishing the different post types, it was a huge help! I did a bit more research on the rss aggregator plugin and it turns out that plugin does not allow feeds to show up in search results, so it seems as if because I allowed the feed post type to come up in results, something with this search plugin is stripping the html tags and displaying all information in a single paragraph tag. For example, it shows the source, date, and main content all lumped together–we would ideally like to have that information separated, so I’m wondering if there is a way maybe in the code to determine for that post type not to strip the html and differentiate between the sections.

Thank you again for all of your help!

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by optimalpartners.

[optimalpartners]

Hi, after working with my team on some final testing, I found a couple of small issues that I’m hoping you can help me with.

The first thing is we tried searching for the word “document” for which there are 2 “posts” and 1 “free resource” however if we use the filters to search only within posts, or as a separate search only within the free resources, nothing comes up. I know it is able to find the posts though because without using the filters they show in both the preview and the main results page.

Also, I’m wondering if I can highlight the search terms in the actual results page. It is working in the preview results, which I noticed can be slow–some of my team members didn’t know that was a feature!

Also when pages come up in the main search results, there is often, if not always, no text accompanying the title of the page. I’m wondering if there is anything that can be done to have some sort of description of the page show in the results.

One last thing that I’m not sure if you can assist with, but I thought I’d ask. We are trying to style certain results differently from others based on the type of post. I’m not familiar with the search.php files or the back end of WordPress, but I’ve read that it is possible to make those customizations using loops and if statements with the types of content. The other issue is that some of the content (RSS feeds that we pull in) is displayed in a <p> which will not allow us to style certain parts of it like the author, source, date separately from the main content preview. I realize you may not have the information for this, but thought I’d ask in case you knew of anything that could help.

Thank you again!

[optimalpartners]

Great! It works! Thank you so much! One last question/clarification. I know you said the grouping on the results page isn’t possible currently but maybe in the future, however is there any way to prioritize certain types of results over others? I’d like to have my posts and pages show up before my feed items as those are not my content and are pulled in by a plugin, I think they should show up last if possible. I noticed the priority settings per post/page, but with the feeds, they are constantly being added so I’m not sure if that is ideal.

Thank you again!

[optimalpartners]

Hi, I updated the information for ftp access. I also found another issue where the sorting categories isn’t working. I did a search, again for higher ed and checked off only feeds, but I’m getting other results as well, see the attached screenshot. I really like how the plugin is intended to work, and I really hope these issues can be resolved, because if not we will probably have to go back to the standard wordpress search. Thank you for all your help!

I’m also now not able to get any results for my searches. I didn’t change anything with the other search settings.

[optimalpartners]

These fixes work great! Thank you so much!

As far as the results page, the override is working, however I found an issue and it happened for two separate search terms, let me try to explain.

I tried searching “higher ed” (no quotes) and for results I got 62 pages, on page 1- I got 1 result which was a feed item (ideally I’d like these to have lowest priority). Then page 2 had 4 results with a mix of pages and posts (pretty much every page or post we have includes the words higher ed). Page 3 also had 4 results, then page 4 gave me a 404 error, but if I went back and clicked page 5, I got 3 results.

This same idea happened when searching for “university” and page 1 I got 2 results and page 2 had a 404 error despite having 28 pages of results.

I’m wondering if there’s any way to fix the number of results per page so that it’s consistent, and also so that my pages and posts appear before lower priority things such as a feed item. But I’m also wondering why and how to fix the issue where for some pages I’m getting a 404 error.

Another issue we found is for example when searching “student” or “college” there are results in the live preview, however no results are returned on the main search results page.

Thank you again for all your help!

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by optimalpartners.

[optimalpartners]

Hi, Thank you so much for your response, I’m planning on trying to get all of this working tomorrow, however I tried installing the new zip file and it wouldn’t let me because the old plugin is still there. How would you recommend installing so that I don’t lose the search info I had set up?

Thanks again!

[optimalpartners]

Sorry, another thing is in the results, I’d like to prioritize certain types of posts over others. For example I would want my posts and pages to show up before a product or an rss feed item.

And in the preview results, am I able to have headers other than page and post? I’d like to list my feeds items separately if possible, they are a custom post type.

[optimalpartners]

I found a place to edit the z index but no matter what I changed it to, it didn’t seem to fix the issue with my menu showing up behind the search icon. One other thing is I saw that I can exclude a certain type of post, however, I need to exclude a certain page. Is there any way of doing this? Thank you!

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by optimalpartners.

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