This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Download

Dave's WordPress Live Search

By Dave Ross

Description

Dave’s WordPress Live Search adds “live search” functionality to your WordPress site. As visitors type words into your WordPress site’s search box, the plugin continually queries WordPress, looking for search results that match what the user has typed so far.

The live search technique means that most people will find the results they are looking for before they finish typing their query, and it saves them the step of having to click a submit button to get their search results.

This functionality requires Javascript, but the search box still works normally if Javascript is not available.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CGR2bJ1mLM
transcript

This plugin is compatible with the xLanguage and WPML plugins for internationalization (i18n) of search results.

Filters

See filter_examples.php in
the plugin files for examples of how to use these filters. Remember, these filters only affect the
Dave’s WordPress Live Search display, not the normal WordPress search results or the posts themselves.

  1. dwls_alter_results
  2. dwls_attachment_thumbnail
  3. dwls_post_title
  4. dwls_the_excerpt
  5. dwls_post_date
  6. dwls_author_name
  7. dwls_alter_result_template
  8. dwls_post_custom
  9. dwls_query_fields

Wish List

Features I want to implement in future releases:

  1. “No results found” message (optional)

Screenshots

  • Demonstration of Dave's WordPress Live Search

Installation

Dave’s WordPress Live Search is a plugin that brings live search, sometimes called “autocomplete”, to your WordPress site. Many of the web’s most popular destinations use this technique so customers can get right to the information or products they’re after, and now you can deliver that same experience to your site’s visitors. Like WordPress itself, it’s designed to be simple to set up and use right away, but powerful and customizable for advanced users.

You can install the plugin right from WordPress itself by going to the Plugins section, clicking “Add New”, and searching for “Dave’s WordPress Live Search”. Click “install now” to add the plugin to your site. If you prefer to install the plugin manually, it’s available for download in the WordPress plugins directory.

After you install the plugin, go to the Settings menu and choose “Live Search”. Let’s take a look at the main “settings” tab, which controls how the plugin looks and behaves. The “Maximum Results to Display” option lets you limit the number of search results your users see. If you have a large site, you should set this to 5 or less or it might take a long time to display. Remember, your visitors can still click the “search” button like they normally would to get all the matching results. The “Minimum characters” option lets you choose how much people need to type before the plugin starts offering results. The longer you wait before showing results, the better the first set of results will be.

The “Results Direction” setting lets you choose whether the results should grow up or down from the search box. People are used to seeing the results underneath the box, but if space is tight on your site or blog, you should show them above the search box to make sure they fit on the screen.

You can also choose what’s included with the search results. They can include a thumnail image, excerpt, even who wrote the content and when. You may want to include the “View more results” link at the bottom of the search results, so users can click through to see more results.

Dave’s WordPress Live Search ships with three color schemes: gray, red, and blue. Advanced users and developers can use the other styling options to better match their site’s theme.

When you’re ready, save your changes, and Dave’s WordPress Live Search is ready to use. It automatically attaches itself to any search boxes in your theme, or any search widgets you add, giving your site’s visitors a better search experience with a minimum of fuss.

FAQ

Installation Instructions

Dave’s WordPress Live Search is a plugin that brings live search, sometimes called “autocomplete”, to your WordPress site. Many of the web’s most popular destinations use this technique so customers can get right to the information or products they’re after, and now you can deliver that same experience to your site’s visitors. Like WordPress itself, it’s designed to be simple to set up and use right away, but powerful and customizable for advanced users.

You can install the plugin right from WordPress itself by going to the Plugins section, clicking “Add New”, and searching for “Dave’s WordPress Live Search”. Click “install now” to add the plugin to your site. If you prefer to install the plugin manually, it’s available for download in the WordPress plugins directory.

After you install the plugin, go to the Settings menu and choose “Live Search”. Let’s take a look at the main “settings” tab, which controls how the plugin looks and behaves. The “Maximum Results to Display” option lets you limit the number of search results your users see. If you have a large site, you should set this to 5 or less or it might take a long time to display. Remember, your visitors can still click the “search” button like they normally would to get all the matching results. The “Minimum characters” option lets you choose how much people need to type before the plugin starts offering results. The longer you wait before showing results, the better the first set of results will be.

The “Results Direction” setting lets you choose whether the results should grow up or down from the search box. People are used to seeing the results underneath the box, but if space is tight on your site or blog, you should show them above the search box to make sure they fit on the screen.

You can also choose what’s included with the search results. They can include a thumnail image, excerpt, even who wrote the content and when. You may want to include the “View more results” link at the bottom of the search results, so users can click through to see more results.

Dave’s WordPress Live Search ships with three color schemes: gray, red, and blue. Advanced users and developers can use the other styling options to better match their site’s theme.

When you’re ready, save your changes, and Dave’s WordPress Live Search is ready to use. It automatically attaches itself to any search boxes in your theme, or any search widgets you add, giving your site’s visitors a better search experience with a minimum of fuss.

Reviews

This is an amazing search form – and works great

October 21, 2020
I started using Dave's WordPress Live Search, many years ago on [link redacted]. And for me it is still working great, even if it have not been updated for a long time. But then again, why update a plugin, that is working perfectly 😉

Unmaintained plugin

August 3, 2018
At first, this seems like a good plugin and it is. I tried to report a bug a couple of months ago and, despite the fact the plugin says it's compatible with the latest version of WordPress, there seems to be bugs that are not addressed. At this point, I had to hack the plugin and edit source code to make it work.

Perfect

June 7, 2018
This is the best search and auto-completion plugin I tried until now. Congratulations for this work !

So Far So Good

March 2, 2018
Just installed this and it works great. Thanks to the developer for this nice plugin...and for the easy-to-follow "instructional video" on YouTube that made it easy to set up. The set up pages were clean and it was easy to see what the various choices would be.
Read all 48 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Dave's WordPress Live Search” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Dave's WordPress Live Search” has been translated into 7 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Dave's WordPress Live Search” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

4.8

  • 2018-03-25 Dave Ross dave@davidmichaelross.com
  • Fixed an old-school PHP 4 style constructor still hanging around
  • Made DWLS_Util::match_array_key_or_default() static
  • Fix bug that sent people to a 404 when clicking outside the title on inner pages
  • Accessiblity improvement (hides the search results from screen readers)

4.7

4.6

  • 2017-05-01 Dave Ross dave@davidmichaelross.com
  • Fixed cross-site scripting vulnerability in unsanitized “tab” parameter on admin pages

4.5

  • 2016-08-29 Dave Ross dave@davidmichaelross.com
  • Sprinkled more JavaScript pseudo-events throughout the code
  • Fixes deprecation warning on PHP 7.x
  • Fixed issue where clicking anywhere but the title on 2nd+ search result went to 1st result

4.4.1

  • 2015-10-15 Dave Ross dave@davidmichaelross.com
  • Changed text domain to ‘daves-wordpress-live-search’
  • Added “Text Domain:” plugin header declaration
  • Removed link to CrowdIn for translations
  • Removed CrowdIn references from readme
  • ^ All this in preparation for WordPress plugin language packs
  • Removed Relevanssi reference from readme

4.4

  • 2015-08-19 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed issue excerpts not displaying
  • Scripts are now enqueued in the footer
  • Admin screen titles are now h1 instead of h2 in WordPress 4.3+

4.3

  • 2015-05-10 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Added ‘underscore’ as a dependency for the plugin’s JavaScript files
  • Updated Copyright dates (yay?)
  • Added a file with examples of how to use the different filters
  • Don’t specify a schema for admin_url(), let it default to ‘admin’
  • firstImg() using fixed regex from dwlstng
  • Using HTML-escaped tags in Underscore.js template (where appropriate)

4.2

  • 2014-05-10 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed a bug parsing the “display thumbnails” and “view more results” settings

4.1

  • 2014-04-17 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Use class=”no-livesearch” to disable live search on a particular search box
  • Fixed a bug saving checkboxes on the “Appearance” tab

4.0

  • 2014-01-12 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Removed check for PHP 4. WordPress 3.5 is the minimum and that needs PHP 5 anyway.
  • Removed caching. It wasn’t effective enough & was a support nightmare.
  • Using an Underscore template to render search results
  • Ukranian translation by Paul Mall (zlyton)
  • Passing extra parameters to WP_Query for faster search queries
  • Store “first image” in postmeta
  • Query post status “publish” because admin-ajax.php runs in an admin context (oy!)
  • Ignore sticky posts.
  • Prevent browser autocomplete on individual input fields, not just the form
  • Tested with WordPress 3.8!

3.3.1

  • 2013-07-07 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fix for “undefined offset” notice
  • Fixed issue with WooCommerce’s AJAX search (only registers pre_get_posts handler when going DWLS AJAX request)

3.3

  • 2013-06-05 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Added search results width to the customizer
  • Faster startup on AJAX requests (fewer includes & hooks registered)
  • If SCRIPT_DEBUG is set, use non-minified scripts
  • Now uses a proper loop to get search results. Hopefully improves compatibility with other search plugins
  • The parameters to the dwls_alter_results hook have changed: array of results (instead of a query object), deprecated (always -1), DavesWordPressLiveSearchResults instance.
  • Now uses WordPress’s native submit_button() function to generate submit buttons in the admin interface for more consistent styling with the rest of admin
  • Requires WordPress 3.5 or higher

3.2

  • 2013-01-22 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed a Javascript error when resizing a window
  • Removed the “debug” tab – wasn’t very useful
  • Force a high z-index on the spinner

3.1.1

  • 2012-12-21 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Always include the “custom” css file on admin pages. Ensures customizer preview always looks right.

3.1

  • 2012-12-21 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • German (de_DE) translation
  • Color picker for WP 3.5+

3.0.1

  • 2012-11-07 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Simplified jQuery selector for older jQuery versions

3.0

  • 2012-11-03 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com and many awesome translators!
  • Turkish (tr_TR) translation
  • French (fr_FR) translation
  • Dutch (nl_NL) translation
  • Polish (pl_PL) translation
  • Portugese (pt_PT) translation
  • Improved method of getting the first thumbnail
  • Canvas/VML-based spinner eliminates the need for the transparent .gif
  • Italian (it_IT) translation
  • Spanish (es_ES) translation
  • Added hooks & filters for people to plug into DWLS
  • Fixed regex parsing issue when permalinks aren’t enabled
  • Support for multiple search boxes (finally!)
  • You can now click anywhere in the result box to go to that result
  • WP E-Commerce is officially supported again
  • Toggle to enable/disable the_content filter.
  • “View more results” is now translatable
  • Fix to jQuery dependency definition (great catch by Robert Windisch)
  • Rewrote DWLSTransients for faster performance/simplicity

2.8

  • 2012-04-29 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Back-ported fix from 3.0 which sets defaults on activation
  • Tested for compatibility with WordPress 3.4

2.7

  • 2011-11-10 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Slovenian (sl_SI) translation
  • Swedish (sv_SE) translation
  • Various i18N fixes now that I have translations to work with

2.6

2.5

  • 2011-09-14 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • WPML compatibility (thanks for the license!)
  • Pruned some outdated code
  • Better handling of Javascript config variables

2.4

2.3

  • 2011-08-03 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Added a hook to keep Relevanssi integration out of the main code
  • i18n for admin screens and user-facing text

2.2

  • 2011-07-27 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Option to disable “View more results” link

2.1.1

  • 2011-07-16 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fix for Relevanssi issue
  • Passing correct $capability string to admin_menu() – thanks lag47!
  • Configurable excerpt length (for Alok)

2.1

  • 2011-05-20 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Major code cleanup & streamlining
  • Added z-index:999999 to all the default CSS files
  • Removed jQuery Dimensions plugin. It’s in jQuery core > 1.2.6 & recent WP releases include jQuery 1.4
  • (Hopefully) fixed IE8 hang issue (jQuery Dimensions)

2.0.2

  • 2011-03-09 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fix for determining plugin URL when WordPress is installed in a subdirectory
  • Sprinkled in static declarations where needed
  • Better? fix for determining plugin URL when WP Subdomains is installed

2.0.1

  • 2011-02-28 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Pass WP_Query a parameter telling it to only return “publish” items (no drafts) — WP3.1 regression case?

2.0

  • 2011-02-24 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Using wp_ajax actions now (deprecating my bootstrap on every AJAX call)
  • Static Javascript (not generated) and inline configuration
  • Cached search results for anonymous users
  • Debug tab for advanced users. Just shows cache dump for now.
  • WordPress 3.1 compatibility!

1.20

  • 2011-01-10 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Generate a static version of the Javascript file

1.19

  • 2011-01-09 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed bug with Relevanssi and setting to display 0 (unlimited) posts
  • Display an alert if another plugin is loading jQuery < 1.2.6

1.18

  • 2010-12-04 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Search “any” content (posts, pages, custom post types)
  • Better compatibility with Relevanssi plugin (worked with Mikko from that project)
  • Minor jQuery performance improvements

1.17

  • 2010-10-25 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Split options into “Settings” and “Advanced” tabs
  • X Offset setting to position the results dropdown
  • Include pages (as well as posts) in search results
  • Raised minimum requirement to WP 2.9 (required for “Include pages” change)

1.16

  • 2010-10-07 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed “max results” functionality lost when implementing WP E-Commerce compatibility
  • Compatibility w/servers that don’t allow getimagesize() to use URLs
  • Merged in Ron Schirmacher’s code for WP E-Commerce tag & meta search
  • Compatibility with WP E-Commerce when table names are used
  • Fix for autocomplete suppression

1.15.1

  • 2010-08-17 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Default hidden source option to 0 (search WP, not WP E-Commerce)

1.15

  • 2010-08-12 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Option to not include any additional CSS file (thanks Andy Hall!)
  • Support for xLanguage plugin
  • Support for searching WP E-Commerce products
  • Replaced clearfix that was somehow lost

1.14

  • 2010-07-03 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • z-index:9999 for cadbloke to keep search results above all other content (that doesn’t already have a z-index of 9999 or higher)
  • Hidden results display when resizing window https://wordpress.org/support/topic/410612

1.13

  • 2010-05-02 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed changelog formatting
  • Reposition the search results popup when the window is resized
  • Send AJAX results with a test/javascript content-type

1.12

  • 2010-03-23 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Now compatible with WP-Subdomains plugin
  • Format dates using WordPress date setting
  • Added MIT license text to daves-wordpress-live-search.js.php and daves-wordpress-live-search-bootstrap.php files

1.11

  • 2010-02-24 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Support for wp-config.php outside main WordPress directory (2.6+)
  • Fix to make “view more results” link work on pages other than home
  • Fix path to stylesheet directory
  • Fix compatibility with child themes

1.10

  • 2010-02-14 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Added option for minimum number of characters that need to be entered before triggering a search
  • More graceful failure message in PHP4
  • Added code to ignore E_STRICT warnings when E_STRICT enabled on PHP 5.3
  • Possible fix for compatibility with Relevanssi plugin (some concern this isn’t working yet)
  • Fix for compatibility with child themes
  • Added MIT license to DavesWordPressLiveSearch.php class

1.9

  • 2009-12-02 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Tested compatibility with WordPress 2.3-2.9 beta 2
  • Fixed stylesheet issue with WordPress 2.5.x
  • Set minimum WordPress version to 2.6. Admin page doesn’t appear in 2.5.
  • Added support for WordPress 2.9 “post thumbnails”
  • Put autocomplete=”off” on the form instead of the search box (fix for Firefox issue?)
  • Use “Display Name” instead of “username”
  • Javascript performance improvements
  • Added page exception list
  • Live search no longer tries to add itself to admin pages

1.8

  • 2009-10-25 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Added note about WP-Minify
  • Tested with WordPress 2.8.5
  • Moved JavaScript to an external file
  • Security – nonce checking on admin screen
  • Security – check “manage_options” security setting
  • Notes on configuration in readme.txt

1.7

  • 2009-08-27 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Thumbnails in the search results
  • Excerpts in the search results

1.6

  • 2009-08-17 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Implemented selectable CSS files
  • Fixed a bug that broke live searches containing ‘ characters

1.5

  • 2009-07-08 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed compatibility with Search Everything plugin, possibly others

1.4

  • 2009-06-03 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Renamed release 1.3.1 to 1.4 because WordPress.org doesn’t seem to like 1.3.1. Seems like kind of a waste to do a full point release for this
  • Building permalinks instead of using post guid (problem with posts imported from another blog)

1.3

  • 2009-05-22 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Fixed an annoying bug where the search results div collapsed and expanded again every time an AJAX request completed
  • Cancel any existing AJAX requests before sending a new one
  • Check for PHP 5.x. Displays an error when you try to activate the plugin on PHP < 5
  • No longer sends the entire WP_Query object to the browser. This was a potential information disclosure issue, plus it was a lot to serialize on the server and parse in the brower
  • Minor code cleanup & optimizations

1.2

  • 2009-04-10 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Code cleanup & optimizations
  • Styled the admin screen to fit in with WordPress better
  • New option: display the results above or below the search box
  • Included a note on the admin screen recommending the Google Libraries plugin

1.1

  • 2009-03-30 Dave Ross dave@csixty4.com
  • Code cleanup & optimizations
  • Fixed compatibility issues with PHP < 5.2.0 and PHP < 5.1.2
  • New option: limit the number of results to display

1.0

Meta

Ratings

See all
Log in to submit a review.

Contributors

Support

Issues resolved in last two months:

0 out of 1

View support forum

Donate

Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin?

Donate to this plugin