Designs & Code

Design, Development and WordPress

Search & Filter Pro 2.1 Released

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Although not a major version change this update is our largest yet (aside from the 2.0 upgrade) and brings about some highly sought after features.

Notable New Features:

Post Meta Field Improvements

Synced/Auto Populated

Post Meta fields are now auto populated / synced. For choice fields this means you no longer have to manually enter the possible options previously, as you create new values, the field updates to show these options.  Manual entry is still available.

With number fields, upper and lower values can be auto detected according to the upper and lower limits used.

Better integration with Advanced Custom Fields

With the post meta fields being synced, we’ve also integrated this with the ACF plugin. If the ACF option is set, Search & Filter will retrieve the possible fields & labels directly from ACF.

Number Formatting

Thousands and decimal options have been integrated with Post Meta number fields.

Compare Mode

For Number and Date fields, there are 2 new compare modes for ranges – lending themselves to bookings systems and events based systems.

Global Settings Page

We’ve added a global settings option under the Search & Filter menu.  This allows for changing of settings that are used across all search forms.

Cache – building the cache initially can be pretty resource intensive and time consuming.  There are new options to control the speed of the initial build & rebuild of the cache – choose a slow setting on shared environments or when resource limits are being reached.

JavasScript – lazy loading JS is now optional, as well as the option to load jQuery i18n files – required for automatically translating the date pickers used in S&F.

WCAG 2.0 Compliant

There has been a complete rewrite of how all input fields are displayed throughout your search forms.  The output of the html has been preserved in almost all circumstances except for the following:

Labels have been added to Search and Select fields, as well as the option (via S&F ui) to add screen reader text to these elements.  These changes were necessary to achieve WCAG 2.0 compliance and brings S&F inline with WordPress standards.

Admin Improvements

There have been a ton of admin UI tweaks & improvements including better error handling (warnings & errors now correctly display on your search forms after saving), CSS / JS fixes and UI improvements, resource reduction (S&F forms were running a few resource heavy processes when being saved/udpated – this has now been reduced to have minimal footprint)

Bug Fixes

There have been 14+ bug fixes in this release.

 

For Developers: New filter

Changing the options & output of input fields

You can now use a WP filter to modify any input field before it is displayed.

In essence it gives you access to the field object which you can modify to change various parameters:

Check out the Gist showcasing some of the features.

Attributes: You get full access to the attributes attached to a particular field – allows for complete customisation and changing custom attributes on the fly.

Prefix & Post fix can also be updated dynamically as well as the defaults for the fields (which options are set).

Options: For fields that have multiple options, you have access to an array containing all options and labels.  This allows for dynamic creation/deletion of custom options, or to allow you to include or exclude certain options programmatically.

You can also modify the attributes attributes of each option individually!

 

That should just about cover the main updates…!  Check the changelog for a complete list.

Happy Filtering

52 Responses to “Search & Filter Pro 2.1 Released”

  1. Milan

    Where I can contact you for a pre-sales question? I need assurance that if I buy this plugin, it will work for the query I need. I am working on client’s website that needs “search” improvements. Can you contact me?

    Reply

  2. Michael

    Hello,

    I would like to purchase the Full version of the Search & Filter plugin, however your website requires a valid account for this, but features no Registration area. I have searched the entirety of this website, and have even submitted a contact-form submission about a week ago explaining this exact situation. I cannot post this issue in the support area either, as this area required a valid account as well. I have not yet received any correspondence from my contact form submission about a week ago, this will be my last attempt before I am forced to seek an alternate solution, as I have a website that needs to be live in 8 days. I would love to give you my money, however I can’t seem to get you guys to take it – It would truly be a shame indeed!

    Thank you for your time.

    Reply

  3. Missa

    Hello, my question is about is it possible to make Search & Filter Pro in french ?
    I don’t know if i can do it ??? thak’s

    Reply

    • Ross

      Yup, all strings are translatable via the admin UI – you can duplicate search forms and change the texts no problem.

      Reply

  5. I have Search & Filter Pro version 1.2.2 installed but don’t know that I can locate my license key. Where would that be located that I could use it to purchase a license renewal? Is there a price discount when purchasing a license renewal versus a new license? Thank you.

    Reply

  6. davit agniashvili

    Ross,

    I have Search & Filter Pro 2.0 version,

    Do I need to buy 2.1 version, or is it possible update it without payment?

    thanks.

    Reply

    • Ross

      Hey Davit, you must have an active license to in order to update – which last 1 yr from purchase – if you have this then you can update no problem. Thanks

      Reply

  7. Gregory McAllister

    Hi,
    Pre-purchase question, I’m starting a food blog and I saw that a website I like that uses this plugin as its taxonomy search, and it is exactly what I want. The question is do I need to be code savvy to be able to reproduce that using the admin UI provided by the “Search and Filter Pro”? Or with some coding skills I could do it?
    The roughly explanation of what I need are checkboxes with real time search in the same page that they select the items.
    Thank you and I’m looking forward to your answer.

    Reply

    • Ross

      Being able to code always helps, but what you have described there are options in the admin interface – so this shouldn’t really require coding.

      Depending on your theme, there may be a requirement to modify your result template (or archive template) from your theme – but this is more basic coding 🙂

      Best

      Reply

  8. Hello,

    I would be grateful if you can tell me if your plugin can help me with my site. It is an archive of magazine articles and is completely done in pages, not posts. Each article has its own page, whose parent is an Issue Page. Each Issue Page has a page order assigned to it. I would like to customize a Search widget that would order results by Issue Page order, i.e. filter articles first by issue and then by title. Can your plugin do this?

    Reply

    • Ross

      Sure, you can set 2 sort orders in the admin, first one would be `post meta` using the meta field `menu_order` (this is how WP stores the page order), then you can set the second from many options – title is one of them 🙂 The only thing is, if sorting by page order, it will be treated as “flat” if you know what I mean. As in, the child pages I don’t thing will inherit the order from the parent pages – I think they have their own values stored in the db for the post meta field `menu_order`…

      Hope that helps

      Reply

  9. Hi,
    I’m considering the purchase of this plugin but have a couple of questions.

    I’m recreating a website with WordPress that will house hundreds of pdf documents and need the ability for advanced search features that your plugin seems to offer. Because of the number of files, I need an file management system.

    Users will not be searching blog posts, but will be using your search features/filters to narrow down their choice of pdf documents for download.

    Will your plugin work for searching through the file management system that I install on the WordPress site?

    Thanks in advance! Lee

    Reply

    • Ross

      Hey Lee – S&F can search the post type “attachment” – any file uploaded to the “media” section of your wordpress website will actually have a custom post type of attachment, associated with the file itself. As long as your file management includes adding tags, categories, meta data, to the attachment post type then S&F should be able to search it.

      S&F can’t search inside the pdf documents directly, but I think file management solution might just be a fancy / automated way of creating and managing the attachment post type (ie, the media section in WP).

      Hope that helps – if you have any specific info in regards to this I may be able to advise further

      Thanks

      Reply

  10. Derek Knox

    Hi Guys – This plugin looks amazing.

    It’s likely you’ve been asked a few times but will be adding a location map search that operates as part of the normal filter? No one does it yet and everyone wants this!

    Reply

    • Ross

      Thanks! Its on the roadmap, fairly sought after so it will be added – not sure on the timeline yet though

      Reply

      • Derek

        I cannot tell you how many filter makers are saying exactly the same thing “everyone wants it so we will do it but it’s not planned for some time’

        And the Geo mapping makers just wont do filters at all.

        Reply

  11. Jorrit

    Does the Pro version allow setting ‘depth’ of taxonomy shown? I.e, only parents, only up to first child layer?

    Reply

    • Ross

      Actually this is a create suggestion but not available as an option.

      You can however filter any field using a WP filter – and with each filter item a “depth” attribute is passed, so you could filter out any of the options you wanted.

      Thanks

      Reply

  12. Milin

    I want to know few things.

    1) is it possible to filter form in page and when click on submit, result will show on another page?
    2) Multiple Filter is allowed with same page?

    Waiting for your reply.

    Reply

  13. Milin

    We have brought your plugin and config as mentioned in documentation but No result found comes and filter options shows 0 value even those have already values.

    Reply

  14. Mina Betra

    Hello there,
    I want to purchase the pro version of your plugin but I have some inquiries.
    1- Can I change the title of (All categories or All tags) in the search box?
    2- Can I filter Search with Custom fields (Using Advanced Custom Fields Plugin)?

    Thanks alot

    Reply

    • Ross

      Hey there, to answer:

      1) yup
      2) sure – however we do not support repeater fields and some of the other slightly odd fields – most of the standard field types can be searched no problem and you can create filters with relationship fields also

      Thanks

      Reply

  15. Hi, I have already download and tested the free version and is working fine. I intend to purchase the PRO version but I need to know if I could separate on each of my pages the search criteria by categories. I don’t want visitors to see other categories when they visit specific page.

    Reply

      • I need to include search and filter but only for specific categories that I have created. I need my visitors to see and select specific download categories on each page. With free version that I have already installed they can see all my download categories.Is this possible? Is there any trial Pro version before I purchase?

        Reply

  16. Sofian

    Hello, I found your plugin and am interested, but I don’t like companies that have no contact possibility at all. Needing to write a comment in order to ask a pre-sale question is not a customerfriendly way. Anyhow by legal rights you also need a disclaimer I guess which I can also not find here. Not so trustful. So I am still interested and want to ask if you have something like a money-back-guarantee, because I am searching for long for a good filter plugin and would need to give it a proper test as well, if this one serves my need before deciding on the 20 bucks.

    Thank you
    Sofian

    Reply

    • Ross

      Hey Sofian thanks for you comment – unfortunately our pre-sales contact form was being abused so we disabled it. RE the plugin & refund – please see our FAQs – https://www.designsandcode.com/wordpress-plugins/search-filter-pro/faqs/#refund-policy – so please make sure S&F has the features that you need by checking out the demos etc – if you have any queries on specific functionality feel free to follow up here.

      PS – We have terms & conditions etc at point of sale on the checkout, but we will add legal info to our footer on our next site (in development!)

      Thanks

      Reply

  17. Parham

    hi there, can’t buy the pro version. it keeps failing on paypal login! and i can’t find a support/contact email or form on your site. hummmm not good…

    Reply

    • Ross

      Hey Parham

      If its failing on PayPal login -then this is a problem with your paypal account – try logging into the PayPal site and fix any issues you have before trying to purchase.

      Thanks

      Reply

  18. Rishab

    Can this plugin be used with Classipress theme? In classipress I have a custom taxonomy called ad_cat. Basically this theme is for classifieds website where in your user can post their ads. Now each ad is assigned to a category (ad_cat) for e.g. Cars. The only drawback of this theme is that it doesn’t support advanced search.

    Reply

    • Ross

      Hey Rishab

      You should be able to use S&F with any theme, the only thing is if you are happy to modify your templates files – as this may be necessary depending on your theme to get things running smoothly. In this we can try to help via the support forums.

      Thanks

      Reply

  20. J

    urgh! ross – the forum seems down. i’m trying to follow the movie DB tutorial, but all forum pages seem to just redirect.

    Reply

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