Plugin update version 2.29.90 was released almost six months after the previous release, v 2.26.80. It would be impossible to implement many functions step by step, the changes affected many parts of the plugin and here we list only the most basic ones.
Common Changes
Plugin settings are now duplicated in the main WordPress menu. In my opinion, this is much more convenient!
Added start Wizard to not forget anything before building the index.
Smart Excerpts
Added a new beautiful style editor for the widget with search results. Styles are automatically minified, which helps to speed up the loading of pages on the site.
Smart Excerpts generation algorithm was significantly redesigned. In the past, situations often occurred that caused the widget generation to crash (for example, there are no colons in the text that divide it into sentences, or all sentences are too long). This has now been fixed. The widget will be built even if you specify a maximum length of 10 characters, and there will not be a single dot in the text.
Main Settings
The form for selecting the types of files that you would like to see in the search results has been redesigned – now there is no need to remember the file mime-types and enter them manually – now this is a set of checkboxes: just select the ones you need!
File Attachment Indexing
Our daughter project TextMill.io (text processing service) has been updated. Added support for almost two dozen different file formats, which are now available for free in the base license of WPFTS Pro. We made a convenient table in the plugin settings to let you immediately see which files will be indexed for search and which ones will not.
Now, the licensing page displays also detailed license information for TextMill.io.
The PDF native parsing library has also been updated and made even better (but alas, it’s still not as good as a similar function from TextMill.io).
Those who like to create sites with Gutenberg support will find the new option “Strip Tags From Content” useful. The fact is that Gutenberg adds a number of system comment-styled tags to the post content, which are recognized by the search engine as “noise” and can spoil the search results. With the option “Strip Tags From Content” enabled, this is no longer a problem.
Custom WP_Query Parameters
Some search settings can now be changed dynamically through the WP_Query parameters. If you are developing a complex search, then this will be useful to you. For example, you can specify cluster weights (cluster_weights) or hide attachments from search results (display_attachments = 0). You can also disable WPFTS completely using the wpfts_disable = 1 parameter and change the search logic AND or OR (word_logic).
Significantly accelerated indexing algorithm – approximately 5 times! We also worked on a formula for calculating relevance – the logarithmic scale gives more beautiful and understandable “score” values and also gives us a room to apply some coefficients.
And the final cherry on the top – now all the texts inside the plugin are internationalized, that is, they can be translated into your language using plugins such as Loco Translate. If you plan to do this, share your translation version with the community!
Thank you!
If you have comments on the operation of the plugin or would like to offer new functionality – do not hesitate to write to us.
