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Adam Greenwell

Getting Started with Lumenare Search

Get up and running with Lumenare Search in minutes.

Current release: 2.1.05

Installation

From WordPress.org

  1. Go to Plugins → Add New in your WordPress admin
  2. Search for "Lumenare Search"
  3. Click Install Now, then Activate

Manual Installation

  1. Download the plugin from WordPress.org
  2. Upload the lumenare-search folder to /wp-content/plugins/
  3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress

Initial Configuration

After activation, configure your basic settings:

  1. Go to Settings → Lumenare Search
  2. Start on the Setup tab and apply the recommended preset
  3. Review basic settings:
    • Enable Plugin – Turn Lumenare Search on
    • Search placeholder text – What users see in the search input
    • Minimum characters – How many characters before search triggers (default: 3)
    • Post types to search – Which content types to include

Setup Presets

The Setup tab gives admins a faster starting point:

Preset Best For
ASP Migration Sites replacing Ajax Search Pro; shown only when ASP data or leftovers are detected
Publisher News, magazines, blogs, and editorial archives
Commerce Product catalogs and SKU-like searches
Knowledge Base Documentation and support libraries
Performance Very large sites that want lightweight scoring first

Lumenare recommends a preset when it detects ASP data tables or leftovers, WooCommerce products, documentation-style post types, or a large editorial archive. ASP-specific setup and import options stay hidden on clean installs. Applying a preset updates ranking, suggestion, freshness, trending, and click-boost defaults without replacing your selected post types.

Setting Recommended Value Why
Minimum Characters 3 Balances responsiveness with meaningful queries
Match Mode Any (OR) Returns broader results for most sites
Fuzzy Matching Enabled Helps users find content despite typos
Highlighting Enabled Shows users why results matched

Building the Index

Before search works, you need to build the search index:

  1. Navigate to the Index Management tab
  2. Click "Reindex All Content"
  3. Wait for indexing to complete

The indexer processes content in batches, so large sites can index without timeout issues. A progress bar shows completion status.

What Gets Indexed

The indexer extracts keywords from:

  • Post titles – Highest weight (default: 10)
  • Post excerpts – Medium weight (default: 5)
  • Post content – Base weight (default: 1)
  • Taxonomy terms – Categories, tags, and enabled public taxonomies
  • Authors and selected custom fields – Optional relevance sources
  • Document attachments – Optional PDF/Office/RTF/text extraction when enabled

Keywords are normalized (lowercase, special characters removed) and stored with per-field occurrence counts for fast relevance scoring.

Automatic Integration

Lumenare Search automatically replaces:

  • Default WordPress search forms
  • Gutenberg Search blocks
  • Theme search forms

No additional configuration needed! Your existing search forms will use Lumenare Search.

Shortcode

Add a search form anywhere with the shortcode:

[lumenare_search]

Place this in any post, page, or text widget.

Widget

Add the search widget to any widget area:

  1. Go to Appearance → Widgets
  2. Find the "Lumenare Search" widget
  3. Drag it to your desired widget area
  4. Configure widget title (optional)

Add the Lumenare Search Trends widget or Lumenare Search Trends block to show public trending or latest successful searches.

Both surfaces can be configured for trending/latest mode, list or chip layout, search counts, time period, item limit, and zero-result filtering.

Latest searches default to repeated successful queries so one-off private searches are not promoted publicly. Lower the minimum occurrence setting only when the site's analytics policy allows raw latest-query display.

Next Steps

Once search is working, consider these optimizations:

  1. Review the Weighting System

  2. Configure Stop Words

    • Add common words that don't add search value
    • Reduces index size and improves relevance
    • Found in Settings → Search Quality → Stop Words

  3. Set Up Synonyms

    • Define equivalent terms to expand search coverage
    • Example: car, automobile, vehicle
    • Found in Settings → Search Quality → Synonyms

  4. Add Important Phrases

    • Boost relevance for specific multi-word terms
    • Example: WordPress security, Sega Genesis
    • Found in Settings → Search Quality → Search Phrases

Monitor Performance

  1. Check Search Analytics

    • Go to Settings → Lumenare Search → Analytics
    • Review popular queries to understand user intent
    • Check zero-result queries to identify content gaps
    • Monitor trending topics

  2. Review Search Intelligence

    • Go to Settings → Lumenare Search → Search Intelligence
    • Review result impressions, CTR opportunities, query promotions, synonym drafts, remediation outcomes, and Search ROI
    • Use source filters to separate native Lumenare data from imported Ajax Search Pro history

  3. Review Index Status

    • Check indexing coverage in Index Management tab
    • Green "Good" status means 90%+ coverage
    • Reindex if coverage drops or after bulk content changes

Common Tasks

Reindex Content

When to reindex:

  • After changing stop words
  • After changing post types to search
  • After changing weight values
  • After enabling document indexing or changing document MIME types
  • After bulk content updates or imports

How to reindex:

  1. Go to Settings → Lumenare Search → Index Management
  2. Click "Reindex All Content" for full rebuild
  3. Or use Partial Reindex options for specific updates:
    • Index only new posts (since last full reindex)
    • Index specific post types
    • Index posts within a date range
  4. For ongoing large catalogs, enable automatic new-content reindexing and choose the WP-Cron interval in Index Management

Adjust Relevance

If results aren't relevant:

  1. Review your weights in the Tuning Guide
  2. Increase title weight if titles are descriptive
  3. Add stop words for common irrelevant terms
  4. Configure synonyms for better matching
  5. Add phrase boosting for important multi-word terms
  6. Reindex after weight changes – weights are applied during indexing

Troubleshoot Issues

If search isn't working:

  • Check plugin is enabled in settings
  • Verify index exists (Index Management tab shows count)
  • See the full Troubleshooting Guide

Settings Reference

Setup Tab

Setting Description Default
Search Presets Apply a curated search behavior profile Recommended per site
Next Moves Jump to imports, quality tuning, intelligence, or index tools Available

General Tab

Setting Description Default
Enable Plugin Turn plugin on/off globally Enabled
Search Placeholder Text shown in search input "Search…"
Minimum Characters Characters required before search triggers 3
Post Types Which post types to include Posts, Pages

Search Quality Tab

Setting Description Default
Match Mode ANY (OR) or ALL (AND) keyword matching Any
Stop Words Words to exclude from indexing Common English words
Synonyms Groups of equivalent words Common synonyms
Fuzzy Matching Enable typo tolerance Disabled
Fuzzy Threshold Edit distance for fuzzy matches 2
Suggestion Providers Ordered provider chain for suggested searches Analytics, imported stats, taxonomies, index terms
Phrase Boost Multiplier for configured phrase matches 1.5
Title/Excerpt/Content Weight Relevance weights 10/5/1
Taxonomy Weights Category and tag weights 5/3
Exact/Prefix/Suffix Multipliers Multi-pass search weighting 10/5/2
Secondary Sort Tie-break or selected date sort Newest first
Freshness Boost Recently updated content lift Enabled
Audio Attachment Boost Small lift for posts with ListenUp audio metadata Visible when ListenUp is installed; default 1.15x
Document Indexing Optional attachment content extraction Disabled

Display Tab

Setting Description Default
Results Per Page Results on search page 10
Dropdown Results Results in live dropdown 10
Highlighting Highlight matching terms Enabled

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