Skip to content

Adam Greenwell

Index Management

The search index is the foundation of Lumenare Search. This guide covers building, updating, and maintaining your search index.

Current release: 2.1.00

What is the Search Index?

The search index is a custom database table that stores:

  • Keywords extracted from your content
  • Per-field occurrence counts for titles, excerpts, content, taxonomies, authors, custom fields, and optional document attachments
  • Post relationships
  • Reverse terms for suffix matching
  • Fast lookup for search queries

Why it's important:

  • Makes search fast (direct database lookups)
  • Enables relevance ranking
  • Powers all search features

Building Your Index

Initial Index Build

When: After first installation or when index is missing

Steps:

  1. Go to Settings → Lumenare Search → Index Management
  2. Check "Indexed Posts" count (should be 0 or incomplete)
  3. Click "Reindex All Content"
  4. Wait for completion (runs in batches)
  5. Verify "Indexed Posts" count matches your published content

Time: 2-10 minutes depending on site size

Note: The plugin automatically indexes new content as you publish it, but existing content needs initial indexing.

Full Reindex

When to use:

  • After changing stop words
  • After changing post types to search
  • After changing weights (title, excerpt, content, taxonomy)
  • After enabling document indexing or changing document MIME types
  • After bulk content updates
  • When index seems incomplete or outdated

Steps:

  1. Go to Index Management tab
  2. Click "Reindex All Content"
  3. Wait for completion
  4. Verify indexed count

Note: Full reindex rebuilds everything. Use partial reindex when possible.

Partial Reindex

When to use:

  • After publishing new posts
  • After updating specific content
  • After changing settings that don't require full reindex
  • For incremental updates

Options:

  • Index New Posts: Only index posts not yet indexed
  • Index Post Type: Index specific post types
  • Index Date Range: Index posts within date range
  • Automatic New-Content Indexing: Schedule WP-Cron to keep large catalogs caught up without a full rebuild

Steps:

  1. Go to Index Management tab
  2. Choose partial reindex option
  3. Select parameters (post type, date range, etc.)
  4. Click reindex button
  5. Wait for completion

Automatic New-Content Indexing

For large catalogs, enable automatic new-content reindexing in Index Management and choose a WP-Cron interval. Lumenare records the last run status, continuation state, and next scheduled run so you can see whether the catch-up job is healthy.

Use this for normal ongoing publishing. Use a full reindex after schema, post type, stop word, weight, or document-indexing changes.

Index Status

Checking Index Status

Indexed Posts Count:

  • Shows number of posts in index
  • Compare to published post count
  • Should match (or be close) after indexing

Index Coverage:

  • Percentage of content indexed
  • Helps identify missing content
  • Should be 100% for published content

Index Health

Signs of healthy index:

  • Indexed count matches published count
  • Search returns expected results
  • No database errors
  • Fast query performance

Signs of issues:

  • Indexed count much lower than published
  • Search missing expected results
  • Database errors in logs
  • Slow query performance

Maintenance

Regular Maintenance

Weekly:

  • Check indexed post count
  • Verify new content is indexed
  • Review index coverage

Monthly:

  • Full reindex if needed
  • Check for orphaned index entries
  • Review index size
  • Optimize database if needed

After Configuration Changes

Requires Reindex:

  • Stop words changes
  • Post types changes
  • Weight changes (title, excerpt, content, taxonomy)
  • Taxonomy weight changes
  • Indexed custom field changes
  • Document indexing or document MIME type changes

No Reindex Needed:

  • Match mode changes
  • Display settings
  • Analytics settings
  • Security settings
  • Synonyms, query promotions, freshness, click, audio, and trending boosts

Troubleshooting

Index Not Building

Symptoms:

  • Index count stays at 0
  • Reindex button doesn't work
  • Database errors

Solutions:

  1. Check database permissions
  2. Verify table exists (wp_lumenare_search_index)
  3. Check WordPress debug log
  4. Increase PHP memory/execution time
  5. Deactivate/reactivate plugin
  6. Run the built-in schema repair/reindex prompt if Lumenare reports failed index writes

Index Incomplete

Symptoms:

  • Index count lower than published posts
  • Some posts not searchable
  • Missing results

Solutions:

  1. Check post types are selected
  2. Verify posts are published (not draft)
  3. Run full reindex
  4. Check for errors in logs
  5. Verify database table integrity
  6. Review automatic reindex status if WP-Cron is responsible for catching up new content

Slow Indexing

Symptoms:

  • Indexing takes very long
  • Timeouts during indexing
  • Server load high

Solutions:

  1. Increase PHP execution time
  2. Increase PHP memory limit
  3. Let indexing complete (don't interrupt)
  4. Use partial reindex for updates
  5. Schedule indexing during off-peak hours
  6. Enable automatic new-content indexing for smaller, repeated catch-up runs

Index Too Large

Symptoms:

  • Large database table
  • Slow queries
  • High storage usage

Solutions:

  1. Add more stop words
  2. Limit post types indexed
  3. Review index content
  4. Optimize database
  5. Consider archiving old content

Best Practices

Initial Setup

  1. Build index immediately after installation
  2. Verify index count matches content
  3. Test search to ensure it works
  4. Check coverage is complete

Ongoing Maintenance

  1. Monitor index status regularly
  2. Use partial reindex when possible
  3. Full reindex only when needed
  4. Keep index updated with content changes

Performance

  1. Schedule full reindex during off-peak hours
  2. Use batch indexing (automatic)
  3. Don't interrupt indexing process
  4. Monitor server resources during indexing

After Changes

  1. Reindex after stop words changes
  2. Reindex after weight changes
  3. Reindex after post type changes
  4. Test search after reindexing

Database Details

Table Structure

Table: wp_lumenare_search_index (prefix may vary)

Contains:

  • Post IDs
  • Keywords
  • Field-level counts used by the weighting system
  • Taxonomy, author, custom field, and attachment signals when enabled
  • Index metadata

Table Management

Don't manually edit the index table. Use plugin interface.

Backup: Include index table in database backups.

Restore: Index will rebuild if table is missing.

← Back to Documentation Home | Weighting System →