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We at HowToHosting.guide will review the WP FullText Search plugin in this extensive post, while overviewing features and benefits of the plugin, along with its PRO version and additional add-ons. We believe that a plugin that extends the search capabilities of WordPress in such a fluent and proper way, needs to get more traction on its path to success.
What is WP FullText Search Plugin?
WP FullText Search Plugin is a WordPress-specific plugin developed to help people and businesses alike in getting a better site index and as a result a better Search. WP FullText also complements the built-in WP search, rather than replacing it, while bringing better search logic into files and elements within your WP site.
It packs plenty of powerful features, and is written in PHP so it integrates with your website better.
WP FullText Search also helps with client satisfaction, SEO ranking, speed optimization and potential bounce rate reduction.
In other words, WP FullText Search will help you in every way possible to bring you and your potential clients a search that you will enjoy using. It has a completely free version, which is not tied to a set period of time, while it also includes a paid Pro add-on if you want Support and more fine-tuning benefits. In addition, you can test the PRO version for 7 days, without payment.
WP FullText Search – Why Do You Need It?
WordPress is one of the most widely-used platforms for site-building. Everybody knows that the platform gets clogged from time to time in terms of files, attachments and not a well-defined database.
If WordPress is indexed better with all of its content categorized properly and clearly, searching will yield more relevant results in direct effect of that. WordPress can be enhanced and optimized for better searches with the right search plugin installed.
One of the very best Search plugins is WP FullText Search. It builds upon the existing WP Search and extends it in a logical way, rather than replacing it, bringing new functionalities.
WP FullText Search makes it even easier by integrating with your websites, without you needing to install, download or pay for any additional, external services.
WP FullText Search – Benefits and Features
We think that building upon the messy, slow and quite-limited WordPress search feature is a chore and really hard to have no bugs involved. WP FullText Search developers have done a wonderful job and have really upgraded the existing search of the CMS platform to a search with a truly high standard. That alone is enough of a benefit for you, your employees working on your websites, as well as your site visitors.
The main features of the WP FullText Search will aid with the search by title, content of posts, meta-fields, custom types of posts, shortcode content and contents of attached files.
The search can be tweaked to indicate the weights of the searches, while also having a built-in Live Search functionality. That way you can switch it ON with a flexible search widget, which can be installed to any place of pages or posts with a special shortcode.
You can also take advantage of the benefits provided by the Pro version of WP FullText Search.
WP FullText Search Tests and Analysis
All tests we at HowToHosting.guide have performed with the WP FullText Search plugin, unanimously show, that the plugin has no bugs, works as intended and as described in a very smooth and efficient manner.
We are surprised to see how well the phrase search and the and / or search give a plethora of relevant results. Adding more plugins on top of the WP FullText Search plugin did not indicate any slowdowns or errors during the time of testing.
Needless to say, we are positive that the plugin is well-developed, with a sound logic behind it.
Main Features of WP FullText Search
WP FullText Search comes with many nice features that will all help you and your visitors to gain access to a better search, and ultimately more relevant and abundant search results.
Here is the complete list of features for WP FullText Search:
- TRUE indexed text search within title, content, shortcodes, meta field values or programmatically-created text data
- Dramatically extends the native WordPress search (also works via WP_Query())
- Supports phrase search (gives a relevance bonus for phrases)
- Supports multisite
- Supports powerful index clustering system (to assign different relevance weights to various parts of a post)
- Supports AND and OR logic
- Ordering results by relevance, date, post ID, title, slug, type, random, comment_count
- Free version does not require 3rd-party libraries or services, everything is inside your website
- Displays search results like Google does (shows sentences with queried words and highlights them)
- Supports Live Search (you can see the list of search results right in the search input box)
- Works well with Shared Hosting
- Supports language translations (English, German, Russian and Ukrainian for now)
- Removes HTML tags and comments from post content before indexing (useful for Gutenberg-driven sites)
- Does the text search inside the shortcode content
- A TRUE relevance algorithm is used (improved TF-IDF)
- Relevance formula can be justified via settings (post title, content and each meta field can have different weights)
- Default search WP ordering is made configurable (for WP site search via ?s= command)
- It has API and full documentation to customize behaviour of the plugin
- Supports and works well with PHP 5.6+ to PHP 7.4+
- Supports add-ons, while you can also write your own extensions in an easy way
As you can see above, there are so many useful features, that you are bound to get a smooth search experience if you install the WP FullText Search plugin. You should also consider its paid Pro Add-on.
WP FullText Search Pro Add-on Plugin
The Pro Addon Plugin of WP FullText Search is a paid option that you can get along with the main plugin.
Albeit optional, we advise you to get the Pro Addon as it offers additional features that will help you with the index and search of your website to a great extent.
Here are the additional optimization features that come only with the PRO version:
- File attachments search by their content (PDF, DOC, DOCX, etc.)
- Filter file search by filetype
- Display file content in search results using Smart Excerpts
- External service to extract text information from files can be used (license included)
- Technical support (with installing, configuring, fixing conflicts)
- Regular automatic updates (same as WP repository updates)
- Add-on for WordPress Download Manager plugin available
- Add-on for Filebase Pro available (makes possible the search and index of files generated by it)
- Custom add-on for a website is available upon request
As you can see, some of these features will ease your work, especially the auto updates and technical Support features. That is especially why we recommend the Pro Add-on.
Conclusion
HowToHosting.guide tested WP FullText Search and we must say that we are impressed and we have seen the benefits that you get with WP FullText Search plugin and its add-ons with our own eyes.
Let us be honest – if you need such a plugin, you probably have a big business website with tons of content and different pages and elements that you need to have a better search for. This means you are already fully invested in your website and want to improve it further. The WP FullText Search Plugin does its job and will get you the features you desire to get from it.
WP FullText Search has some competitors that offer almost the same feature-set, but they are not as cheap as WP FullText Search Pro. The plugin also has a free version with many of the features included, so it is great that you can live-test a big chunk of its functionality before going with PRO. A 7-day period of the PRO version is also included if you fill out a short form with your name and email address, to test it fully.
What We Like
We at HowToHosting.guide like the following in the WP FullText Search Plugin:
- True indexed search, phrase search, plus the and / or search logic
- Multi-site Support is included
- Supports customization and is compatible with multiple related plugins and custom code
- All features that are offered for Free
As you know, WordPress as a platform that has a very limited and simple search, so it is not very helpful or effective. Installing a plugin such as WP FullText Search helps your website and all related searches done on it.
What We Do Not Like
By now, you can see how the Pro Addon of WP FullText Search adds additional features that you cannot test unless you pay for the Pro version. And this is exactly what we do not like about the Plugin:
- Pro version of WP FullText Search is paid, but has crucial features
- Add-ons WP-Filebase Pro and WP Download Manager both require the paid WP FullText Search PRO version to work
- Supports a small pool of languages, and we like to see it expanded
Most people seem to want a more in-depth search for their content, base files, and index. Thus, they will need the features of the additional add-ons and PRO version of WP FullText Search, meaning that they will have to pay for it. At least WP FullText Search is a great, steady and fully-working plugin that does its job reliably.
Here are some articles that can help you optimize your WordPress further that we suggest you read:
Light and Fast WordPress Theme – How to Test It?
WordPress Speed Optimization Plugins – How Do They Work