[Larry Bartley]

I’ve just purchased Pro Pack and I’m setting up a Chamber Of Commerce directory. I find the search box that appears in the Connections output works extremely well to index every word in our member profiles but the standard WordPress search box cannot find anything in them. From the website’s search box it’s like none of the member profiles exist. Is this a shortcoming of the Connections plugin or have I missed something or done something wrong in the setup?.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Larry

No, that is exactly how it is supposed to work as Connections is not integrated with the core WordPress search.

[Larry Bartley]

That just seems like a terrible shortcoming for something that otherwise seems to work so well. Your explanation pretty much renders this plugin useless to me. I really have to have a directory that WordPress can index. Are there any work-arounds to make this happen? If not I’ll probably need a refund. Also if Connections data isn’t in the Core WP search database, can Google index the information in Connections? For example if someone searches Google for one of our members will Google be able to find and return their information that’s stored in the Connections database?

[Steven Zahm]

@ Larry

The only WordPress directory related project that integrate with the core WP search are directory themes. All the plugins that I’m aware of and at the last time I checked them out; do not integrate with the core WP search. Likely for the same reasons. Currently, I do not know if WordPress provides the necessary hooks to accomplish this. If it does, there is a huge challenge in how to commingle the post search results with directory search results that would be of benefit to the end user. I will very likely continue to improve the searching feature within Connections rather than investing that time in integration because it is very seldom requested.

Integration with the core WP search has no relation to Google’s ability to index your site. I’ve built many SEO items into the core of Connections to entice the Googlebot to index the content and I will be adding more such as changing the markup from hCard (which is still supported by search engine) to the new and preferred Schema.org markup; altering the page creation date and last modification date to match those details when clicked thru to a single entry. Addiotnally, if the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin supports it, injecting the Connections data into the sitemap it creates for search engines. Ultimately though, it is up to the Googlebot if it will crawl the pages and if it index it to return as search results.

[Michael Seguin]

@Steven, I am overall pleased with the plugin after some intermittent use on various client sites over the past year. So I just went pro with the all-in-one pro pack. One of my needs was the same as Larry above, search from the default wordpress search widget. I assumed that this language, from your settings-connections-settings-search section meant that the pro themes do in fact integrate with the core wordpress search:
“Search on the front end of the website is enabled in select premium templates only. None of the supplied templates include the search feature. These settings will affect the result of search on both the Manage admin page and the front end of the website.”
In parsing the language again given what you say above, I can see this is not what you are saying, and fully understand the limitations here… But you might consider making that language somewhat more explicit as to this limitation. I am overall still quite pleased, and can work around that issue easily… just sayin’ ;-)

[Steven Zahm]

@ Michael

So, would adding something like “search does not integrate with the core WordPress search” be effective?

[Michael Seguin]

@Steven – Completely. Then add a line to the effect that “Search within the directory is easily accomplished via the pro template widget feature, and is far more elegant when separated from the core search, which returns results the average directory searcher would not want.”

I will add that I was presented (on the fly of course) the other day with the need to enable users to edit their directory entries themselves. I had not anticipated this need, and had actually advised the client against the creation of actual subscriber accounts for users. Found myself in a minor pickle, but after a 30 second search, was pleased to see you had already addresses this functionality with the Link supplemental plugin. Granted I had to go and suck all the users in via import, but once that was done, ‘link’ing them to their directory entries with edit privileges as described here was a snap: http://connections-pro.com/add-on/link/

With a framework as flexible as WP, there are always many ways to do something, from custom to cobbled together… it is just nice to see a plugin author go the extra mile and address not one but multiple use cases in a particular space. Makes me happy to support this plugin.

~m

[Steven Zahm]

@ Michael

Thanks, I add this to my issue tracker. I’ll take the advise and see what I can come up with. Many thanks for your input.

Glad you like Link. I think you like the improvements coming … boils down to far better integration between Form, Link and Connections to allow front end user maintenance.

If you have a moment, I would truly appreciate a review as they really do make a difference. Many thanks in advance.
http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/connections

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