Getting better but still needs a few things

  • 5/16/17: Updated rating to 3 stars based on v2. (See replies below for more info.)

    Autocomplete works well and fast. Category pages show up in autocomplete results, which is great. Beyond that it really needs more flexibility to be worth the cost since many of us don’t qualify for the free plan. The biggest things it is lacking IMO:

    1) The post snippets in the autocomplete results — at least for me they are completely irrelevant. It seems to pick random things off the page. There should be an option in the plugin to turn this off. Better yet, why not use the OG:description. For those of us that use Yoast these are already available and optimized.

    2) It’s great the category results return in the autocomplete results, but the only thing that shows is the category label. Why not use the actual category title? And if the category has a photo it should show that as well.

    3) While the autocomplete results show the category pages, I’m not able to get the normal search results to do the same. I haven’t spent a lot of time on this so it could very well be user error on my part but it if nothing else it doesn’t seem to be easily accomplished, at least in my situation. (And I’m not really too interested in it until #2 above is fixed anyway.)

    I’ve contacted Algolia about these things and they do seem responsive so hopefully they will be addresses in future updates and I can revise my rating.

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by reversewinesnob. Reason: updated after v2
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Contributor rayrutjes

    (@rayrutjes)

    Hi there,

    We recently released a v2 of the plugin, and made sure to integrate your feedback.

    In the latest version:

    1. Snippets are now relevant. we changed the way we split records and the we we store snippets.

    2. The autocomplete heading titles can now be customize directly from the configuration screen. Regarding category images, given this is not a native WordPress feature, we do not support it out of the box. I’d love to hear more about it to see what we could do.

    3. I’m not sure to get this one. I think you’d like to display categories as part of the results on the search page? This is indeed not currently supported by default. That being said, I don’t think it requires a lot of work to make it happen. Let me know if my description fits your need.

    I really hope that the new version is closer to your needs.
    I’d really appreciate if you could give it a try again ??

    Thanks for your sincere feedback, and sorry about the delay,

    Cheers.

    Thread Starter reversewinesnob

    (@reversewinesnob)

    Hi Ray, thanks for the update! I updated the other day and overall am pretty happy with the changes. I didn’t realize the snippets were part of it since I have them hidden but I will check that out.

    #2 (the customization of the autocomplete titles) is great. A further enhancement here would be specifically on the Category results. Currently it just shows the category name, which are usually quite short, versus the whole title. For example, this category page just shows as “Malbec” in the autocomplete results, instead of the “The Best Malbec Under $20 – The Reverse Wine Snob Picks!”: https://www.reversewinesnob.com/search/label/malbec/
    And yes, if it were possible to pull the image in from that page on the autocomplete that would be even better but I understand this is not native to wordpress.

    #3: Yes, that’s right. Using the Malbec example above in autocomplete I get the category page as a result. If you hit enter and go to the full search page, the category page result is gone. This would be huge if you can add that in.

    Thanks again for the update, definitely an improvement, I’ll revise my rating upwards a bit based on this.

    Plugin Contributor rayrutjes

    (@rayrutjes)

    I’m glad it gets more close to your expectations.

    #2 Would you mind taking a screenshot of where you fill in the “whole title” for a category in the admin? If this is indeed a native WordPress native thing, chances are we can easily add it.

    #3 Would you mind taking a screenshot of where you actually provide the category screenshot? Are you using a specific plugin for that?

    Regarding adding categories to the instantsearch page, I guess we could in the future let users choose what content types to search on like for the autocomplete.

    Thanks for having added a star ??

    Thread Starter reversewinesnob

    (@reversewinesnob)

    Here you go, it’s called the “Archive Headline”. I believe this is a feature of the Genesis themes. You can also see where the photo is added in the “Archive Intro Text”.
    Category Page

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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