Better Search

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Overview:

The default WordPress search is limited because it doesn’t give you results based on the title or content of the post, but by date.

Better Search replaces the default WordPress search engine with a more powerful search engine. Visitors will find more relevant search results of search terms. You can fine tune results by giving the title or the content more weighting.

Better Search supports templates for perfect integration into your blog template. Template for Twenty Eleven theme included in the package.

Additionally, the plugin will track the searches and allow you to present a “search heatmap” of the most popular searches. Support for WordPress widgets will allow you to easily add this heatmap to your theme’s sidebar or footer.

Features:

Automatically replaces your default WordPress search with Better Search results
Search results sorted by relevance. You can also include pages and attachments in the search results
Fine tune results by changing the weighting of post title and post content
Option to turn off relevancy based matching. This will sort results by date
Display a list of popular search terms (daily and overall) on your blog in the form of a heatmap
Support for a template file for perfect integration into your blog template
Clean uninstall if you choose to delete the plugin from within WP-Admin
Works with caching plugins like WP-Super-Cache and W3 Total Cache

Requirements:

WordPress 3.1 or above

Installing

Download Better Search.
Extract the contents of better-search.zip to wp-content/plugins/ folder. You should get a folder called better-search.
Activate the Plugin in WP-Admin.
Goto Settings > Better Search to configure.
Goto Appearance > Widgets to add the Popular Searches sidebar widgets to your theme

Options:

Below are screenshots of the default options available in the Settings screen

Better Search options in WP-Admin

In order to display the most popular searches, you will need to add <?php if(function_exists('the_pop_searches')) the_pop_searches(); ?>.

In order to display the most popular searches weekly/daily, you will need to add <?php if(function_exists('the_pop_searches_daily')) the_pop_searches_daily(); ?>.

Alternatively, use the sidebar widget to display the overall or weekly top searches.

You can customize the output by adding a template file in your themes folder. The plugin includes a sample file for Twenty Eleven WordPress theme

ChangeLog:

1.2.1

Fixed: Missing argument warning for heatmaps

1.2

Updates for better search template compatibility. New template included in this release
Quick links added in Plugins page in WP-Admin
Relevance score is now displayed as a percentage
Fixed: Daily search terms were not being cleared
Modified: Default search colours for the heatmap are grey and black instead of blue and red
Modified: Plugin will not add a link to Better Search homepage by default
Modified: New WordPress widget to display the popular searches in your sidebar
Added: New template file based on Twenty Eleven WordPress theme

Read previous entries in the changelog.

To Do:

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Comment below and tell me what you would like to see added to this plugin

Support the Development

Writing and testing plugins takes a good amount of time. If you like the plugin and find it useful and would like to donate something for my work please do click the Paypal Donate button below. The payment is secure. I haven’t filled in any amount. Feel free to donate what you please. Any amount is welcome. Thank you