Fine tuning the search configuration
Last updated
Last updated
After selecting the proper environment and plugins, there are a few tricks to increase search performance.
These changes are recommended on most shared hosts and lower performance servers, as well as in cases with thousands of posts. These changes can improve the search performance significantly.
If you have a relatively big database, then the is a amazing tool to generate additional indexes on database tables like the posts, post metadata, users etc.. It can yield a huge performance gain for your overall site as well as the queries.
WARNING! Please be very careful when using any database altering tools. Make sure to have a full website backup before initiating any commands or changes.
If your main results are Posts, Pages, Products or other custom post types, you should definitely consider using the .
Using the index table engine is highly recommended if:
there are over 1000 posts or the post contents are lengthy
searching by is neccessary
searching by
searching in media files
While it's a great feature, it requires a decent server to handle. Shared hosts tend to have an execution limit, which can be reached very quickly with constant ajax requests.
To disable this feature go to the Search Sources -> Live Search Triggers panel. t to 'Trigger live search' (see screenshot).
After this change the user will have to hit the Return key or click the magnifier icon to start the ajax search process (depending on your configuration).
Front-end filters are effective even if they are visually turned off! To disable them, they have to be removed on the search configuration.
Make sure to minimize the number of front-end filters
Remove the less important filters if possible
Minimize the number of items excluded/included - instead of excluding/including by multiple child categories, exclude the parent category only etc..
Autocomplete is triggered on every keystroke, so just like the previous option - unless only google is selected as the source. In that case your server is not invoked in the process.
Solution 1:
Solution 2:
By default this feature is disabled, but in case you decided to use it, it can cause a decent performance slowdown.
To turn it off, go the the Search Behavior -> Keyword logic & matchingpanel and set the "Secondary logic" option:
There is a built-in, optional file and database based search cache. To enable it, go to the Cache Settings submenu.
There is either a File or Database caching method. We recommend trying both to find out which one works in your case faster.
These changes can have a relateively big impact on the overall performance.
As discussed in the previous section, the ajax performance is unfortunately affected by every single plugin you have installed.
However there is an implemented custom ajax handler, which can try to bypass unneccessary plugin loading, making this process faster.
To enable the custom ajax handler, click the Compatibility Settings submenu.
Cropping images to thumbnails can cause a definite slowdown, mostly in cases where the source images are too big. Image cropping can be disabled on the Caching options page:
Using can be a major blow for the overall search performance, especially when combining a lot of filters on a large set of results.
Use them in combination with the
The exclusion/inclusion documentation .
Do not use the inclusions and exclusions at the same time. In that case using an should be sufficient, as everything else is excluded.
