WordPress.org

New and Improved Plugins Directory Search

Posted February 19, 2009 by Michael Adams (mdawaffe). Filed under General.

One of the biggest problems and most frequent complaints we’ve had with the WordPress.org Plugins Directory is the horrible, horrible search results.

No longer.  We’re now using Sphinx (a “free open-source SQL full-text search engine”) to power search on the Plugins Directory both from the website and from within your blog’s admin (Plugins → Add New).

It works much better. There are a few oddities floating around (our fault not sphinx’s) that we’ll be cleaning up shortly, but we’re happy enough with it on the whole to start letting everyone else use it 🙂

Currently, the search only indexes the plugin’s title and description/installation/FAQ/etc. (from the plugin’s readme.txt file), but we’ll be adding things like authors and tags soon.

See Also:

Want to follow the code? There’s a development P2 blog and you can track active development in the Trac timeline that often has 20–30 updates per day.

Want to find an event near you? Check out the WordCamp schedule and find your local Meetup group!

For more WordPress news, check out the WordPress Planet or subscribe to the WP Briefing podcast.

Categories

Subscribe to WordPress News

Join 1,930,685 other subscribers

Archives

%d bloggers like this: