wpSearch could be the WordPress search you’ve been waiting for

July 31st, 2008 | By Patrick

About a month ago, I was looking for a quick and easy way to play around with a lucene index to prepare for an interview. I looked high and low for something I could implement quick and easy, but to no avail. I found a lucene search for MediaWiki, but the documentation was terrible. I looked at the Zend_Search_Lucene module to see if I could quickly put something together with the Zend Framework — nope, I was quickly over my head.

Fortunately though, Kenny Katzgrau was not over his head. I found his blog, Code Fury, where he alluded to a WordPress plugin he was working on that would leverage a stripped down version of Zend_Search_Lucene to greatly improve WordPress searches. As far as I was concerned, this was the best of both worlds. I could play around with lucene, and I could improve Enter Venture’s search function.

After contacting him, Kenny was kind enough to let me play around with an earlier, pre-alpha version of wpSearch. I had a bit of trouble with the initial install, but search results were better than my default WordPress search. The plugin used an Ajax layer to display search results, rather than my native search template, which I didn’t like. Not so anymore.

This version of wpSearch is great. It seamlessly integrates with my Enter Venture search template. It offers the ability to customize the search relevancy on Titles, Content, and Tags, and the results speak for themselves. Just check out the top 5 results for a few keywords with the default Wordpress search versus wpSearch:

Default wpSearch
“entrepreneur”
1. Narrow your idea, widen your experience 1. Muhammud Yunus, A Real Entrepreneur
2. The Art of the Start 2. Columbia Entrepreneur Organization’s PitchFest
3. Enter Venture Visitors 3. Entrepreneurship at Columbia, a warmup post
4. The value of engineering education 4. Dealing with Constraints
5. My Whiteboard: the best $75 dollars I’ve ever spent 5. What this blog will be about
“video”
1. Narrow your idea, widen your experience 1. NY Video 2.0
2. Enter Venture visitors 2. Mashable Exhibit Hall - NY Internet Week
3. NY Video 2.0 3. NY Tech Meetup - Internet Week
4. My Whiteboard: the best $75 dollars I’ve ever spent 4. Narrow your idea, widen your experience
5. Getting Real by 37signals gave me chills 5. Dealing with Constraints
“reader”
1. The Time Problem of the Internet 1. Back up. What the feed are you talking about?
2. Enter Venture visitors 2. Enter Venture Modus Operandi
3. Enter Venture Updates, version 1.2 3. Why start blogging
4. Mashable Exhibit Hall - NY Internet Week 4. Enter Venture updates
5. Back up. What the feed are you talking about? 5. The Time Problem of the Internet
“comment”
1. The Time Problem of the Internet 1. Why start blogging
2. Enter Venture visitors 2. Enter Venture updates
3. NY Video 2.0 3. Enter Venture Modus Operandi
4. The value of engineering education 4. Enter Venture Visitors
5. Mashable Exhibit Hall - NY Internet Week 5. NY Video 2.0
“columbia”
1. Enter Venture Visitors 1. Columbia Venture Community
2. NY Video 2.0 2. Entrepreneurship at Columbia, a warmup post
3. The value of engineering education 3. Columbia Entrepreneur Organization’s PitchFest
4. Two Ideas for the NY Startup Scene 4. Two Ideas for the NY Startup Scene
5. Enter Venture Updates, version 1.2 5. The Elements of Style
“book”
1. Narrow your idea, widen your experience 1. Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
2. The Pragmatic Programmer 2. Getting Real by 37signals gave me chills
3. The Time Problem of the Internet 3. Designing Web Navigation
4. The Art of the Start 4. The Elements of Style
5. Enter Venture Visitors 5. The Art of the Start
“new york”
1. Narrow your idea, widen your experience 1. NY Tech Meetup - Internet Week
2. Two Ideas for the NY Startup Scene 2. Web Analytics Wednesday at Avenue A | Razorfish
3. Mashable Exhibit Hall - NY Internet Week 3. Entrepreneurship at Columbia, a warmup post
4. NY Tech Meetup - Internet Week 4. Wisdom of Choice - A speech by Kai-Fu Lee
5. Wisdom of Choice - A speech by Kai-Fu Lee 5. Two Ideas for the NY Startup Scene

For the majority of these results, wpSearch finds exactly what I’m looking for while the default Wordpress search seems to return the same results time after time. The two have similarly relevant “new york” searches (which is to say, neither is perfect), but wpSearch is perfect on the “book” search as it finds 5 of my 6 book posts in the top 5 results. My 6th book post came in at number 6.

The one knock on wpSearch is that the install may slip some people up. There are a few steps to complete, and it still looks like some kinks need to be worked out based on the WordPress plugins page’s comments. It’s much better than the original version and should only get easier.

Congrats to Kenny for putting together what seems like a potentially great new way to search with Wordpress. I look forward to future releases.

Everyone else, let me know what you think of wpSearch.

Posted in Blogging, Reviews

2 Responses to “wpSearch could be the WordPress search you’ve been waiting for”

  1. Robert Irizarry Says:
    August 7th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    I guess I’m one of the early adopters currently running it on my guitar blog. Overall, I’ve been very impressed with its search relevance - just night and day compared to the default WordPress behavior.

    I ran into a few problems but I reported them and Kenny has been very responsive. I’m really looking forward to several improvements he already has in the queue according to his latest update.

  2. Sigmund Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 4:44 am

    Impressa:) or as a Portuguese, vpechatlilso!

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