Search no longer works for me

Hi,

I had been using this plugin for years as the front for my KB

You’re posting in the forum of the MyKnowledgeBase theme. Are you using this theme or are you perhaps using my VS Knowledge Base plugin in combination with a theme?

The MyKnowledgeBase theme is adding a search bar underneath the menu and this search bar searches for posts. That’s it. It does not hook into other search forms, such as the default search widget.

Are you willing to share a link to your website, so I can check for myself?

Guido

Thank you very much for your reply. Knowing that there is some help available is a big relief.

Unfortunately, the KB is on a LAN and has no publicly available URL; is all just notes about my various projects and highly disorganized, especially about the KB itself. ?? ??

The current incarnation has gone through a number of attempts to build up my notes in a searchable DB arrangement to act as a crude backup for my memory. As with all things, if something works well for too long, much of the background gradually fades into the mist of history. Something the KB was intended to prevent .. but there just weren’t enough ‘breadcrumbs’ to help me restore the core.

Now that you have mentioned VS Knowledge Base, it may well have been an important part of my setup which never made it into the KB. I had been wondering how a ‘theme’ was intended to ‘act’ as a plugin all along, but then I am no WP/PHP guru ….

While I am still unsure how I ended up in this predicament, I will have a good look at it and try to see if I can port the existing data to VS KB.

In your opinion, would this be something that could be setup as a Docker image??

I had been wondering how a ‘theme’ was intended to ‘act’ as a plugin all along

Good point, I think this is nowadays not allowed anymore, when listing a theme at org. A knowledge base is plugin territory.

You can easily check which theme you’re using, and whether you’re using my VS Knowledge Base plugin or not. You might be using another plugin, that causes this searching issue.

By default a WP search form searches in the title and content of posts/pages. It does not search in custom added fields. To include custom fields in search results you need an additional plugin. So if your knowledge base contains custom fields, you might also have an additional search plugin installed which doesn’t work properly anymore.

For me it’s quite difficult to help you, without having a live site.

Regarding Docker, have zero experience with that.

Guido

Thanks again for your comments.

One of the reasons I was thinking about a Docker installation is because my usual way of trying to resolve such major ‘blocks’ is to try and keep what ever I have still working and start a completely new ‘replacement’. Among many things it gives me a chance to learn something new while also ‘fixing’ the problem without losing too much. The KB I had is/was very helpful for me and I am sure I will need all it has while I try to work towards a new and hopefully better solution.

There are only so many PCs available on my LAN and, right now, my impression is that using a WordPress docker might give me sufficient isolation; aside from that I have another project in mind that might benefit from more experience with Docker etc.

Still, with all the other things to be looked after over the holidays, it might take a week or more to even get started, but in any case, I will be sure to keep you posted.

I very much appreciate your help with this.

As it turns out, I did manage to get a bit of time and installed WordPress along with my data in a Docker container. All seemed to work about as well as I could tell as in my old installation within XAMPP.

There are some differences in the overall look, but none I could detect in the functionality.

When I also installed the VS Knowledge Base plugin, I saw very little difference, though I am not at all sure whether just installing it should or would make any difference or how I could determine if VSKB is actually used or has any effect. Using the search box seemed to give me what I expected. Which leaves me a bit confused and unsure whether I even used VSKB or whether I just found some leftover code from an unfinished or even attempted trial.

Is there any way I can test any of these hypotheses?

Would a clean install without anything but the VSPK plugin be useful? How would I export all of the many existing posts and then import them into VSKB?

Hi,

My VS Knowledge Base plugin does not hook into searching features of WP. It creates a couple of custom category and post queries, so you are able to list categories and posts in columns at your site. That’s it.

The MyKnowledgeBase theme does the same. And, as mentioned before, it’s adding a simple search form. This search form only searches for posts (the post post type).
Are you using my MyKnowledgeBase theme? If not, we can better close this topic, because it’s not relevant for the MyKnowledgeBase forum page.

If you’re having trouble with searching, please check your plugins for additional search-related plugins. Or you might have added a custom script that hooks into the searching (in theme file functions perhaps).

Guido

As it turns out, when I inspect the KB data from the dashboard page, I have only 3 posts, all the rest of my data is contained in pages.

Hence I have to conclude that any data left/found on my PC for either the MyKnowledgeBase theme or VS Knowledge Base is spurious and a leftover from an unsuccessful attempt to make use of the theme or plugin, with the specifics lost in the dust of history.

So as far as that goes, I suppose it is time to close this thread, though I am still curious whether or not VS Knowledge Base might be an option for me as I never was all that satisfied with my setup – without evidently using either of the two.

Unfortunately, I am quite unsure whether or not – and how – I can/could convert my existing data to use either or both of your WP items. From the description it would seem that it should be exactly what I am looking for, but …..

I am quite sure I do/did not have any customized scripts, nor any other KB plugins.

On the docker installation I have the following plugins enabled:

Classic Editor, ImageMagick Engine, UpdraftPlus

I have also disabled VS KB

and I my only theme is Shipyard

I do have a search box, but, for identical search terms, I see little, if any difference in any search results whether I have VS KB activated or not

Assuming I did convert all my pages to ‘post’ types, what differences should I expect to see?

Are there any demo or test sites?

Hi,

My VS Knowledge Base plugin does not hook into your search. It only makes it possible to list posts in 1-4 column(s) at the frontend of your site. And the default search from WP only searches in post/page title and description.

Because this becomes off-topic I suggest contacting me via my website (check my profile). Putting your site online isn’t an option? Makes debugging much easier.

Guido