WordPress 3.7 incorporates some new, neat features which
will save you time and enhance usability, and both of are quite
important. Except for all of that, new search improvements also are
remarkable. They take WordPress to the level where you even can make use
of its search on a site without embarrassment.
Change and innovation are always expected on the World Wide
Web. Sometimes they still can be fast paced surprisingly. Similar
happened with WordPress. Its 3.6 Version was released in August only,
and just few months later, its 3.7 version is here.
This new version is packed with lots of new features which
are certain to make WordPress much better. I’ll include the big ones
only in this post. However, this new WordPress 3.7 represents more than
few new features. This had the greatest turnaround of any other version
in WordPress’s history, but it’s arguably the largest update also in
long time.
Read on to learn more about WordPress 3.7:
Automatic Updates
Now, gone are those days of updating to newest build of any
version manually. Gone are those days of wasting your time updating for
the security fixes. So is with WordPress 3.7, all things are automatic.
It seems easy on surface and it may not even be huge leap.
However, time is money now, and the automatic updates will also save
time for everybody who runs his site on WordPress.
It also will ensure speedy updates when security patch come
out, perhaps making WordPress much safer in process. Automatic updates
only will update to diverse builds of same version you have installed
already. You still will have to choose to upgrade manually to major
release (for instance, 3.8).
Improved Password Meter
A clean security update is improved password strength
measurement. The more conventional, old password strength meter now is
replaced with the Dan Wheeler zxcvbn, which first was adopted by
Dropbox. The zxcvbn employs better algorithm which measures strength of
passwords more realistically.
Other Languages
Language functionality of WordPress’s will recover with
3.7. If you’re running WordPress in any other language than English, the
installation will download any other available translations
automatically for the official default WordPress theme.
The web is global phenomenon and the WordPress powers
almost 20 percent of it, thus it makes good sense that they’re now
taking up steps to make this a simpler platform even for the ones who
aren’t making use of it in English.
Unveiling New WordPress Search
Let’s now talk about what really has got me excited: The WordPress search is now getting a major renovate.
Given that everybody surfs the web via search primarily
(i.e. Google), I think that having civilized search functionality on the
site is must. WordPress never has delivered on this front in past, but
is it about to change now?
Old Deficiencies
Consensus long has held that WordPress’s search was lacking
– tremendously lacking. Even in the year 2008, Joost Valk pointed that
“WordPress default’s search kind of sucks.”
It’s hardly got any better ever since – since then, 5 years
have passed without any major updates to WordPress’s search
functionality.
The issues with WordPress search tend to be numerous. Its
search algorithm looks for only an accurate match to user’s query –
nothing more, nothing less. That is a completely outdated method of
doing things, however it isn’t the worst aspect even of search
experiences.
Search results are sort in chronological order,
irrespective of relevance. Instead of getting results containing most
relevant posts, the users get those which are the most current.
In addition, there is no search filtering or refinement
option: you can’t search in a specific search or category within your
search result.
Why This New WordPress 3.7 Version Is Great Improvement?
Not all the issues have been addressed fully. But while
search changes might not be great, they haven’t got as much of buzz as
they deserved. For the very first time in many years, WordPress search
tends to be seeing some important change.
For one, the search is much more flexible in the terms of
what combination of keywords it actually looks for and the ways it
arranges the results. Here is new ordering sense:
-
Match complete sentence to post title.
-
Search for all search term in the post titles.
-
Search for search terms in the post title.
-
Match complete sentences in the posts content.
Significantly, search results will be ordered now by
relevance instead of date! That alone boosts the qualities of search
experience dramatically.
WordPress search might not be the finest of the finest, but
it’s now functional and usable – a big transform from past and reason
for enthusiasm.
What about the Other Search Options?
When this WordPress search sucked, the people didn’t put up
just with it and hoped for a modification. Driven by ingenuity and
necessity, WordPress users sought or developed their search solutions.
Craving search power of the web search’s powerhouse, lots
of people turned to Google’s Custom Search that provides functionality
of world’s premier search engines to the smallest blogs even. Others
wanted WordPress plugin to go with their needs, represented by the
brilliant Relevanssi.
So let’s take a closer and quick look at the two
alternatives and observe how they now stack up WordPress 3.7 gets with
it better native search option.
Google’s Custom Search
Since so long, WordPress’s search was so poor that
WordPress.org even didn’t make use of it. In its place, it used Google’s
Custom Search.
There in fact used to be the plugin which could
integrate the custom search in your site; however, it is out of date
now. Nowadays you’ll need to implement code yourself.
Relevanssi
It actually is plugin created for WordPress specifically.
It replaces standard WordPress search by a much better search engine
having lots of configurable options and features.
It ordered the searches by relevance very long before
WordPress team got close to actually doing it, and plugin still has
comparative benefit of allowing you search for the phrases with quotes.
Other exclusive feature is its ability to search entire
website – not only pages and posts. Relevanssi enables the users to
search tags, categories, comments, and even the custom fields. Moreover,
fuzzy matching can search for words which partially match with search
terms – stellar functionalities which keeps human elements of searches
in the mind.
Relevanssi has leg up on the WordPress search clearly, and is perhaps
as good or advanced as to the Google Custom Search. Eventually, for
those people who need much more sophisticated search functionalities and
willing to go via the hassles of installing plugin, Relevanssi is
really a great selection – even with the WordPress’s search update.