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Adam Greenwell

Lumenare Search Documentation

Version 2.2.01

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

Search Enhancement

Search & Answers

Display & Integration

Indexing Extras

Index Management

Troubleshooting

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

Search & Answers

  • Search & Answers combines the former Semantic Search and Ask Site settings
  • Choose keyword search, question understanding without AI, or opt-in meaning reranking of existing hits
  • Show cited answers in an Ask Site form or above full search results
  • Cited excerpts work without an AI provider; generated summaries are opt-in
  • Analyze site content from the admin to prepare passages and embeddings
  • Enabled search-result answer cards show a clear no-answer notice when evidence is insufficient; unanswered Ask Site questions can become Search Intelligence opportunities

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

What's New

2.2.01

  • Improved PDF font decoding and recovery of unusable cached document text
  • Bounded passage sizes and longer AI-analysis request timeouts
  • Actionable analysis errors that identify sources to inspect while keeping unresolved documents visible
  • Resume after an attachment repair without restarting completed compatible analysis
  • Reliable bookmarked search-filter URLs, accessible filter controls and improved result highlighting

PDF reminder: A file can look correct but have damaged or missing extractable text. Readable PDFs with valid text mappings are supported; image-only scans need OCR. Inspect and repair an affected PDF. Service failures can involve healthy files, so follow the error category before replacing sources.

2.2.00

  • Unified Search & Answers settings for search behavior, answer style, and placement
  • Optional meaning reranking using compatible prepared embeddings within existing search candidates
  • Cited answer cards for submitted search results, alongside the existing Ask Site form
  • Clear no-answer messages when the site's content cannot support an answer
  • Connector-aware embedding model selection with Refresh model list
  • Analyze site content, with browser progress, pause, and resume controls; no WP-CLI required
  • Improved question handling, including explicit quantities and processor terminology
  • Fixed content-analysis readiness on databases with mixed collations
  • Existing settings and complete AI opt-ins are preserved; upgrading does not enable additional placements or AI writing

See the Search & Answers guide for setup. This documentation covers release 2.2.01.

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-Agent header 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

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."

Learn more about Synonyms →

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.

Learn more about Trending →

Search & Answers

Choose how searches are interpreted and where answers appear. Ask Site forms and submitted search-result answer cards use public site content and cite their sources. Cited excerpts need no provider; meaning reranking and AI-written summaries require separate opt-ins and an eligible service.

Meaning reranking reorders a bounded set of existing keyword hits. It does not search the whole corpus for additional results. Analyze site content prepares the compatible embeddings it needs.

Set up Search & Answers → · Place an Ask Site form →

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.

Learn more about Analytics →

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

The search index, analytics, prepared passages, and stored embeddings live in your WordPress database. Keyword search, question understanding, and cited excerpts can run without an external AI service.

When you opt into AI features, some data is sent to your selected provider:

  • Content analysis: searchable public passages are sent to create embeddings
  • Meaning reranking: uncached search queries are sent to create query embeddings
  • AI-written answers: the question and retrieved public passages are sent for a generated summary
  • Refresh model list: requests provider model metadata; it does not analyze your content

Provider charges and data policies apply. Review them before granting the plugin access or enabling AI features. See AI costs and data sharing.

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)

Local records remain under your control. AI requests are subject to the selected provider’s handling and retention policies.

Last Updated: October 9, 2026

Plugin Version: 2.2.01

Requires WordPress: 6.2 or higher

Requires PHP: 7.4 or higher