[John Vis]

Hello,

My client is looking to add searching of a directory to the default WP search. The biggest problem is, I noticed the entries don’t appear in the xxx_posts table – most advanced plugins will let you expand search to include custom post types but that wouldn’t work in this case .. any ideas / possibilities?

Thanks, John

[Steven Zahm]

@ John

It is not possible to integrate with the core WordPress search because it is highly optimized for only searching WP pages/posts or Custom Post Types (CPT) if they are registered for search.

Connections does not use CPT for its data because the db schema for CPT’s are optimized for post like data only. Connections uses a db schema optimized for directory content for performance and scalability. You’ll find that much larger plugins such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads have moved or are moving away from using CPT’s because using them are too inefficient for the custom data schema’s they require.

If you want search, you need one of the premium templates. If you want to have a search input on your home page, use the Search Widget which comes as part of the Widget Pack. You can place this widget in your theme’s sidebar so it shows up everywhere.

Hope that helps!

[John Vis]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for the quick response! We’re going to try seeing if this search plugin works (https://searchwp.com/) .. the reason it might work is it indexes any page with shortcodes so because we have a page for all the churches, it may index all the church names and addresses at least. I will let you know if it works.

As a database admin and web programmer, I’m glad to see you (and others) are not bowing to WordPress’s sad posts table because you’re right, it doesn’t lend itself to very good organization.

John.

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