wpSearch 1.5.0.5, the first official release after the 1.5 landmark, brings to the forefront some of the features and fixes slated in the last post. wpSearch 1.5 has had the following features implemented:

• Comment Searching
• A behind-the-scenes event logger for easily figuring out user issues
• An upgrade to the underlying Lucene Search
• An upgrade to the underlying StandardAnalyzer (used for relevancy)

And these fixes:

• No more null results after a post is edited
• Foreign character support (or simply indexing content with ‘UTF-8′ encoding
• Memory issues for content-heavy posts

wpSearch 1.5.0.5 is a rock-solid release that is starting to make a name for itself in the Wordpress world. The new ‘Phone Home’ feature in wpSearch allows users to report their copy of wpSearch. A few of the blogs with wpSearch currently in use are listed here:

• Building The Ergonomic Guitar
• ComputerBob
• Savoring Kentucky

Patrick Cushing at the EnterVenture blog wrote a very detailed comparision of the default Wordpress search’s relevancy vs. wpSearch’s. This article ended up at digg.

Of course, as far as wpSearch has come in its short lifespan, there exists a set of users that deserve credit for pointing out issues and keeping me informed of bugs, needed features, etc.. So, in no particular order, I would like to thank:

• ComputerBob, at ComputerBob.com for pointing out the first instance of the empty result issue. He has thoroughly documented his usage with wpSearch at his blog, in a fair and balanced fashion. Furthermore, he has sent his index data back with detailed comments when most users would simply give up on wpSearch. Thanks ComputerBob.
• Robert Irizarry, who has kept the wpSearch thread at the Wordpress repository stuffed with feature ideas and issue notices.
• Olivier, who’s 6000 posts provided the first failed scalability test for wpSearch. His pointing out of this issue led to a change to allow for greater scalability — in other words, wpSearch 1.5 was tested successfully up to 7,000 posts. Great dedication to detailing these issues has helped wpSearch greatly.
• Karl Heigl, who first mentioned the fact the wpSearch was not handling German accents, and subsequently all foreign (to the U.S.) characters. This also ended up affecting Olivier. This bug was fixed in 1.5.0.5. Thanks Karl!
• A user named Brian, said, “Thanks for the update. If you need any other information or even help testing, I’d be happy to assist. Just let me know. ” Thanks for your support Brian.
• And to all those who have donated to this project so far!

So, wpSearch 1.5.0.5 wouldn’t be at it’s current status if it weren’t for those supporting it.

Features coming up for wpSearch include result highlighting, contextual snippets, and a progress meter for index building.  I encourage everyone who is reading this but hasn’t installed wpSearch yet to try it out, and see the awesome blog search that you’ve been missing.

Certain features available in wpSearch 1.x.x.x have been removed in favor of tighter integration with the Wordpress core and raw speed. The search popup is no longer an option, removing the need for 2 javascript libraries, 2 CSS files, and 4 images. This decreases the page load time by close to 500 ms for a first-time page view over a broadband connection.

wpSearch now integrates its results into the Wordpress search using pure Wordpress API. Here are some statistics from version 1.5:

These stats were gathered on a non-dedicated development server with 1 GB Ram, 3.2 Ghtz Hyperthreaded Intel P4, with Windows XP, and a WAMP installation without any sort of code caching (like Zend Optimizer). Needless to say, this server isn’t the quickest, but it still turns out very impressive search times.

wpSearch 1.5 is also completely compatible with the latest release of Wordpress, 2.6.

Get it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpsearch/

Keep the comments coming!

katzgrau@gmail.com

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpsearch/

The latest version as of right now is 1.1.0.0. Several major features have been added since the original beta release.

• Seamless integration of wpSearch into your blog. After you activate wpSearch and build your blog’s search index, the search box on your blog will now be configured to use wpSearch for searches.
• You can now decide whether you want search results in the page ( the standard ), or have them loaded into and AJAX search pop-up. (Originally, the AJAX pop-up was the only way to view results ). This option is configurable via the Wordpress admin screen.
• Bloggers can now tweak the importance of things such as title, content, and tags in a blog search. This effectively allows control over what is considered relevant in a blog search.

So what’s next for wpSearch?

More searchable content: It’s no secret that the best content on a blog is sometimes in the comments. This is especially true for bloggers of tech and programming sites where blog readers often put useful contributions in comments.

The opening of the source: At SourceForge! Sure, PHP is inherently open-source (it’s a scripting language, after all!). But the best future for wpSearch would entail its placement into SourceForge.NET where the coding community can have the opportunity to contribute to the wpSearch project. wpSearch is already registered at SourceForge, and has a project page at:

http://wpsearch.sourceforge.net/. (Right now, there isn’t much setup up).

I plan to have wpSearch developed at SourceForge, and have stable releases be uploaded to the plug-in repository at Wordpress.

There are some other features I plan to add to wpSearch very shortly, one of which is contextual search result content, so you can see the words around the matching content of a search result.

I can’t think of the others off the top of my head. What I would really like to know is if anyone finds wpSearch to be of value so far, and whether they are having any difficulties.

I read on another blog that blogs get xx% more comments if the words “Have your say” are at the end of a post. I think I’ll try that.

Have your say!