Fuzzify Search – Add Instant Search Results for Static Sites

Description

Search for static WordPress sites, and typo-tolerant instant search for live ones.

Fuzzify Search writes one JSON index of your content and searches it in the visitor’s browser with Fuse.js, an established open-source fuzzy-search library. Nothing runs on your server at search time, so it keeps working in a static HTML export, where WordPress’ own search, admin-ajax.php and live-search plugins that ask the server for results have nothing to talk to.

It suits live dynamic sites too: an instant results dropdown on your existing search boxes, typos forgiven, results you rank yourself, and no external service or account.

Free, with nothing to sell. There is no Pro version and no upsell. Nothing a visitor types is sent to your server or to anyone else. The browser downloads the index file from your own site once, and searches it locally.

Built for static exports

• Tested with the free Simply Static plugin. The index is rebuilt at the start of each export and included in it, together with the results page and the plugin’s scripts. Simply Static Pro is not needed. If you want extended search operators or pattern-based URL exclusion, Simply Static Pro’s own Fuse.js integration covers those.
• After an export, search works with PHP switched off: the dropdown, the results page, and old /?s=term addresses, which are forwarded to the results page.
• Addresses are relative to the site root, so links still work when the static export is published on a different domain than WordPress itself runs on, which is the normal case for a static-site workflow.
• Only Simply Static hooks in automatically. With another exporter, add the index file to the export yourself; its address is shown on the settings screen.

Search

• Enhances the default WordPress search and the core Search block directly, the moment it’s active: an instant results dropdown on the search box already there, no new widget or shortcode needed.
• An instant results dropdown on every standard WordPress search field.
• Typos are forgiven in titles, categories and tags, and SKUs. Every word typed must match.
• Words that matched are highlighted, and a short piece of text around the match is shown when the words were found in the excerpt or body. When they matched a category or tag instead, that category or tag is shown (“Filed under: …”), so no result appears without a reason.
• Chinese and other languages written without spaces work, including input-method composition. Keyboard and screen reader support is built in.

Index

• Choose the post types and fields: excerpt, content, categories, tags and other terms, and product SKU. The title is always searched.
• Cap the body text kept per item to keep the index small on large sites.
• Hide a single item from search with a box on its edit screen. Password-protected posts are indexed by title only.
• WooCommerce: Cart, Checkout and My account are left out, and so are products set to hidden or “shop only”.
• The index is rebuilt shortly after content is published, changed or removed, when settings are saved, from the settings screen, and with wp static-search rebuild.

Ranking

• Sort rows to set which field counts most (title, categories and tags, SKU, excerpt, body text), and which post type counts most when several are searched.
• A “Try it” box on the settings screen shows the ranked results, and which field each matched in, using the values in the form as you change them.

Results page

• A Search page is created when you activate the plugin. Pressing Enter in a search box opens it. It can be switched off, or pointed at another page that contains the [static_search_results] shortcode.
• The results page is set to noindex.

For developers

• Filters: static_search_settings, static_search_include_post, static_search_item, static_search_config and static_search_selector (PHP only; there is no field for it on the settings screen). Action: static_search_index_built.
• A script API: window.StaticSearch.search( 'query', { type: 'product' } ) returns a promise of results.
• WP-CLI: wp static-search rebuild and wp static-search status.
• Colours come from CSS custom properties, with a dark variant.

Bundled libraries

• Fuse.js 7.5.0, Apache-2.0, https://github.com/krisk/Fuse. Bundled into the search scripts.
• SortableJS 1.15.7, MIT, https://github.com/SortableJS/Sortable. Bundled into the settings screen script only.
• Select2 4.1.0, MIT, https://github.com/select2/select2. The unmodified release files in assets/vendor/select2/, used on the settings screen only.

The licence texts are in assets/js/ and assets/vendor/select2/. The scripts in assets/js/ are minified builds; the source is in the public repository.

Technical details