Version 2.1.05
Welcome to the comprehensive documentation for Lumenare Search, a powerful WordPress search plugin that delivers instant, relevant results with intelligent ranking, Search Intelligence, migration tools, and resilient indexing.
Table of Contents
Getting Started
Search Quality
Relevance & Ranking
- Understanding the Weighting System – How relevance scores are calculated
- Tuning Your Weights – Optimize rankings for your content
- Phrase Boosting – Boost specific phrases in results
Search Enhancement
- Keyword Match Modes – ANY vs ALL matching
- Fuzzy Matching – Typo-tolerant search
- Synonyms – Expand search coverage with equivalent terms
- Stop Words – Exclude common words from indexing
Ask Site
- Ask Site Overview – Grounded, cited answers from your own indexed content
- Answer Modes – Sources-only and AI Client modes
- Readiness Requirements – What Ask Site needs before it goes public
- Placing the Form – Shortcode and block usage
- Unanswered Questions – Turn content gaps into work items
Analytics & Trending
- Search Analytics – Track popular and zero-result queries
- Search Intelligence – Report on opportunities, remediation outcomes, and Search ROI
- Ajax Search Pro Migration Cleanup – Import history and clean up leftovers safely
- Search Trends Lists – Publish trending or latest successful searches with a widget or block
- Dynamic Trending – Boost trending content automatically
- Trending Configuration – Configure trending algorithm
Display & Integration
- Instant Live Search – Real-time dropdown results as visitors type
- Live Result Images – Show optional featured-image thumbnails in the instant dropdown
- Search Highlighting – Highlight matching terms
- Shortcode Usage – Add search forms anywhere
- Widget Integration – Add to widget areas
- Filterable Results – Content type, taxonomy, and date filters
- Result Sorting – Relevance, newest first, and oldest first sorting
Indexing Extras
- Automatic Reindexing – Scheduled new-content indexing for large catalogs
- Document Content Indexing – Search inside uploaded documents
- Audio Attachment Boosting – Small ranking lift for posts with attached audio
Index Management
- Reindexing Content – When and how to rebuild
- Partial Reindexing – Update specific content
- Index Health – Monitor coverage
Troubleshooting
- Search Not Working
- No Results Appearing
- Results Not Relevant
- Performance Issues
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lumenare Search?
Lumenare Search is an advanced WordPress search plugin that replaces the default search with a fast, intelligent, live search experience. Using a custom database index with weighted keywords, it delivers relevant results instantly as users type.
Key Benefits
Intelligent Relevance
- Weighted keyword system prioritizes titles, excerpts, content, taxonomies, authors, custom fields, and optional document attachments
- Phrase boosting for domain-specific terms
- Taxonomy weighting for category and tag matches
- Dynamic trending based on search popularity
- Freshness, audio, click-through, post-type, and exact-query promotion boosts
Enhanced Discovery
- Fuzzy matching finds results despite typos
- Synonym expansion broadens search coverage
- Stop words reduce noise in results
- Multiple match modes for different use cases
Real-Time Experience
- Live search dropdown shows results as you type
- Optional featured-image thumbnails keep instant results more visual while staying compact
- No page reloads required for initial results
- Search term highlighting shows why results matched
- Modular suggestions guide users with analytics, imported migration stats, taxonomies, and index terms; full-title suggestions are opt-in
Answers, Not Just Links
- Ask Site answers visitor questions from your own indexed content, with cited sources
- Sources-only mode works without any AI provider; generated answers are opt-in
- Unanswered questions become Search Intelligence opportunities instead of silent content gaps
Actionable Insights
- Track popular search queries
- Identify zero-result searches to find content gaps
- Monitor click-through rates on results
- Discover trending topics automatically
- Publish trending or latest successful search lists through the Search Trends widget or block
- Review impressions, CTR opportunities, query promotions, synonym drafts, remediation outcomes, and Search ROI
Quick Links
- Search not working? See Troubleshooting
- Results not relevant? Read the Tuning Guide
- Just installed? Start with Getting Started
- Need feature details? Check Features Overview
What's New
2.1.05
A security and compatibility release:
- Excerpt text is withheld for password-protected posts in search results, live results, and Ask Site sources; protected posts remain findable by title, matching WordPress core behavior
- The client-supplied
User-Agentheader no longer contributes to rate-limit bucket keys, so the limiter cannot be bypassed by varying it - Archive entry reads are bounded when extracting text from Office and OpenDocument uploads, so a decompression bomb cannot exhaust memory during indexing
- A tracked search click is validated against an existing, publicly viewable post before analytics rows are written
- The document Test Parse action is authorized against the specific attachment rather than the media library as a whole
- Confirmed compatibility with WordPress 7.1
2.1.04
- Public Ask Site question forms through the
[lumenare_ask_site]shortcode and the Lumenare Ask Site block - Grounded Ask Site REST and Abilities API responses with cited source bundles, readiness gating, source-only fallback, and optional WordPress AI Client answers
- Search Intelligence workflows for unanswered Ask Site questions, including draft-answer creation, review, dismissal, and existing-content lookup
- Zero-result opportunity classification so content gaps are separated from imported, non-English, numeric, or bot-like query noise
- Improved suggestions so list-like terms are split or suppressed and live typeahead searches do not become future suggestions
- Fixed taxonomy facet settings so deselecting all facets, including Categories, persists after saving
- The Search Imports tab is hidden once Ajax Search Pro import and cleanup work leaves nothing actionable
Feature Overview
Instant Live Search
Real-time search results appear in a dropdown as users type. No page reloads, no waiting—just fast, relevant results that help visitors find content immediately.
Learn more about Live Search →
Weighted Relevance System
Configure how much weight different content areas receive. Title matches can be prioritized over content matches, taxonomy terms can boost related posts, and specific phrases can receive significant relevance boosts.
Learn more about the Weighting System →
Fuzzy Matching
Enable typo-tolerant search using Levenshtein distance algorithm. When users search for "computr," they'll still find "computer." Configurable threshold lets you balance tolerance vs. precision.
Learn more about Fuzzy Matching →
Synonym Support
Define groups of equivalent words. When you configure "car, automobile, vehicle" as synonyms, a search for "car" also returns results containing "automobile" or "vehicle."
Dynamic Trending
Automatically identify trending search topics and boost related content. The system tracks search frequency and growth rate, then applies configurable relevance boosts to trending content.
Ask Site
Let visitors ask a question in plain language and get an answer grounded in your own indexed content, with the sources it drew from listed alongside it. Sources-only mode needs no AI provider; generated answers are an opt-in layer on top.
Search Analytics
Built-in analytics track every search query, including results count, zero-result queries, result impressions, and click-through data. Search Intelligence turns that data into CTR opportunities, query promotions, synonym drafts, remediation outcomes, and Search ROI.
Trending And Latest Search Lists
Show public trending or latest successful searches with the Lumenare Search Trends widget or block. Latest search lists default to repeated successful queries so one-off private or zero-result searches are not promoted publicly.
Learn more about Search Trends Lists →
Search Highlighting
Matching search terms are visually highlighted in result titles and excerpts. Users instantly see why each result matched their query, improving confidence in search relevance.
Learn more about Highlighting →
Phrase Boosting
Define important phrases that should receive significant relevance boosts. When someone searches for "Master System," results containing that exact phrase rank much higher than posts that just happen to contain "system."
Learn more about Phrase Boosting →
Support
For support questions, please use the WordPress.org support forums.
Privacy & Data
Lumenare Search stores all data locally in your WordPress database. No data is transmitted to external services.
What's stored:
- Search index (keywords extracted from your content)
- Search analytics (queries, result counts, timestamps)
- Click tracking (which results users click)
- Result impressions and Search Intelligence action outcomes
- Trending data (calculated from analytics)
All data remains on your server and under your control.
Last Updated: August 2026
Plugin Version: 2.1.05
Requires WordPress: 6.2 or higher
Requires PHP: 7.4 or higher