bbPress has a simple search form that is based on the default WordPress search, allowing you to search by keywords only. But, all that will change with my new, upcoming plugin.
Upcoming Dev4Press plugin for WordPress and bbPress brings advanced search, similar to search specialized forum systems use. This advanced search includes a wide range of extra filters, query elements and results display controls.
When released, version 1.0 will include:
- Query types: topics and/or replies
- Search in title or content only
- Filter by author (by name or select from the list)
- Filter by the forum (public forums, subscribed forums or select forums)
- Filter by publication date, including date picker support
- Filter using the topic tags
- Change results order
As an extra feature, the plugin will include a filter for Topic Prefix implemented with GD Topic Prefix Pro plugin. And, there are plans to expand some of the filter fields in the future versions and even adding of new fields.
The plugin will include cache layer to speed up some operations, settings to limit some of the features to logged in users, default templates for form elements and SCSS based styling. And, the plugin will include various filters and actions for expanding the plugin.
The plugin will support bbPress 2.5.14 and latest RC version of upcoming bbPress 2.6. The plugin will require WordPress 4.5 or newer, and PHP 5.5 or newer. It is tested with default templates and many different themes, and so far, it works fine. There is no guarantee that plugin will work with every theme, especially if the theme is missing essential bbPress filters or actions.
The plugin will be released on Monday, September 10, 2018. This will be a Premium plugin, it will be available immediately to all users with active Dev4Press Plugins Pack license, and all users with an active license for GD bbPress Toolbox Pro, GD Topic Polls Pro or GD Topic Prefix Pro will get special 30% discount for a limited time (whole week).
If you have any questions, or suggestions about the plugins, feel free to comment and let me know.
yet another intuitive and useful bbpress plugin definitely worth having !!!
also great to have integration with GD Topic Prefix Pro plugin ;
but what about GD Knowledge Base Pro ?
GD Knowledge Base Pro already has an amazing/powerful live search feature with bbpress integration for forum topics and replies.
If someone already has such a knowledge base & forum setup/integration, then it is expected that users would want such results in their searches (ie. forums, replies, articles, faq, user guides etc)
how would this new “advanced search for bbPress” fit into such a situation ?
have the GD Knowledge Base Pro search on the main support page only then offer the more fine grained “advanced search for bbPress” when already inside forum pages ?
what if someone on a forum page also wants to quickly “search” for everything there as well (articles, faq, user guides etc) ?
ultimately for greatest flexibility GD Knowledge Base Pro integration with “advanced search for bbPress” may eventually be necessary instead of having separate short codes for different types of searches all over the different pages ?
your kind thoughts in this would greatly appreciated.
– looking forward to “advanced search for bbPress” release, congrats on yet another great bbpress plugin.
As always Randall, thanks for supporting my work!
Right now, Knowledge Base plugins doesn’t factor in this. New search plugin is made for forums, and it can’t be expanded on other post types due to specific nature of forum content.
Knowledge Base live search uses mostly unchanged WP search to search multiple post types, but applying different criteria in single search is impossible when content types have nothing in common: you can’t use category as a filter, if only some types support it. And forum search can’t be applied to other content, because the filters for forums or prefixes don’t work outside forums.
New plugin (and it will be called GD Power Search for bbPress), will do it’s best to improve forum search, but it can’t do anything for other content types.
thanks for such a speedy reply.
so integration with GD Knowledge Base Pro may not be possible,
but also not necessary.
basically it may be sufficient to offer Knowledge Base live search on main support page and have GD Power Search work its magic and be useful when searching inside actual forums.
makes sense now to me because if a user is searching from inside a forum page,
it goes to reason that they expect such results and not necessary results for Articles, FAQ etc.
so the two can still be useful and powerful indeed not just for their specific uses but even when used together/separately.
And, you can always include the link from Live Search area to power search the forums, I plan to do that on Dev4Press. Two search methods can work well together.
Will this plugin show colored highlighted search words in the results?
Thanks
Hi,
Yes, highlight the search is available in GD Power Search Pro for bbPress. Check out this in our forums:https://support.dev4press.com/forums/search/
Milan