Multisite search only works in Relevanssi Premium. Free Relevanssi can be installed in multisite environments, but it cannot search across sites.
Relevanssi Premium can only support multisite searching across sites in the same multisite network. Relevanssi can’t search across multiple sites that are not in the same multisite installation. Cloud-based search tools can help you there, for example, AddSearch has support for multiple domains.
Installing multisite Relevanssi
Relevanssi is a network plugin, so it only needs to be installed once on the network level. However, you need to activate the plugin and build the index for each site. On the other hand, you can adjust the settings for each blog.
Enabling the multisite search
There are several ways to enable multisite searching. If you want all searches to be multisite searches, you can enable multisite searching from the Relevanssi searching settings. If you want only some searches to be multisite searches, you need to adjust search forms to include a specific parameter that will enable the multisite searching. See “Changes to the search form” below.
Changes to search results templates
The search results templates require some changes, otherwise, the permalinks will be wrong. Inside the while (have_posts()) loop, add as the second thing after the_post(); this:
<?php switch_to_blog( $post->blog_id ); ?>
(If the while loop is inside a PHP code block, you don’t need to use the PHP tags here, and you can just add switch_to_blog( $post->blog_id );.)
That’ll make sure the blog setting is correct and the permalinks are correct. Make sure you have this code in the right place! I’ve seen a couple of cases with problems in the search, caused by having this code in the wrong place. It should be the first thing inside the while loop, but after the_post().
Also, in order to make sure everything else (sidebars, for example) works correctly, you need to restore the current blog. So, as the last thing inside the while loop, add:
<?php restore_current_blog(); ?>
Switching the blog without modifying the template
If you can’t edit the search results templates for some reason, for example, if you’re using a page builder theme, there’s another method you can use that is based on the the_post action WordPress uses whenever it loads a new post. Add this to your site:
add_action( 'the_post', 'rlv_switch_blog' );
/**
* Switches the blog if necessary.
*
* If the current post blog is different than the current blog, switches the blog.
* If the blog has been switched, makes sure it's restored first to keep the switch
* stack clean.
*
* @param WP_Post $post The post object.
*/
function rlv_switch_blog( $post ) {
global $relevanssi_blog_id, $relevanssi_original_blog_id;
if ( ! isset( $post->blog_id ) ) {
return;
}
if ( ! isset( $relevanssi_original_blog_id ) ) {
$relevanssi_original_blog_id = get_current_blog_id();
}
if ( $post->blog_id !== get_current_blog_id() ) {
if ( isset( $relevanssi_blog_id ) && $relevanssi_blog_id !== $post->blog_id ) {
restore_current_blog();
}
switch_to_blog( $post->blog_id );
$relevanssi_blog_id = $post->blog_id;
}
}You also need to make sure the blog is restored after the last post. Here’s a function for that:
add_shortcode( 'relevanssi_restore_blog', 'rlv_restore_blog' );
/**
* Restores the blog if the blog ID is not the original value.
*/
function rlv_restore_blog() {
global $relevanssi_blog_id, $relevanssi_original_blog_id;
if ( $relevanssi_blog_id !== $relevanssi_original_blog_id ) {
restore_current_blog();
}
}You can have the search results template run the rlv_restore_blog() function directly after the post loop. If that’s not possible, you can also trigger this function with the shortcode [relevanssi_restore_blog]. Add that shortcode to your search results page after the results.
Astra theme
If you are using Astra, it doesn’t have templates you can easily edit. Fortunately, it has action hooks you can use to do the switching. Add this to your site:
add_action( 'astra_page_template_parts_content', 'rlv_blog_switcher', 1 );
add_action( 'astra_template_parts_content', 'rlv_blog_switcher', 1 );
function rlv_blog_switcher() {
global $post;
if ( ! isset( $post->blog_id ) ) {
return;
}
if ( $post->blog_id !== get_current_blog_id() ) {
switch_to_blog( $post->blog_id );
}
}
add_action( 'astra_page_template_parts_content', 'rlv_blog_restore', 9999 );
add_action( 'astra_template_parts_content', 'rlv_blog_restore', 9999 );
function rlv_blog_restore() {
restore_current_blog();
}Multisite search finds nothing?
Relevanssi by default does not search non-public blogs. If you’re developing your multisite network and the sites are not set as public yet, Relevanssi will return no results.
This can be fixed either by making the blogs public or by adding this to your site:
add_filter( 'relevanssi_multisite_public_status', '__return_true' );
This filter will make all private blogs public for Relevanssi purposes. See relevanssi_multisite_public_status for more information.
Limitations of the multisite searching
There are some limits to what multisite searching can do.
- There’s limited access to search parameters. You can use
post_type,operator,meta_query,include_attachmentsandorderby. - Taxonomy terms from subsites can cause problems. Searching for taxonomy terms in taxonomies that exist in the current site works: for example searching for categories from different sites works, because every site has categories. However, if another subsite has a taxonomy that doesn’t exist in the current site, it cannot be found in the search.
Changes to the search form
Update: These are not usually necessary anymore; these can be set from Relevanssi settings now.
To search multiple blogs in the same WordPress network, use the searchblogs argument. You can add a hidden input field in the search form, for example. List the desired blog ids as the value. For example, searchblogs=1,2,3 would search blogs 1, 2, and 3.
Here’s an example search form:
<form action="https://www.relevanssi.com/" method="get">
<input id="s" name="s" type="text" value="To search, type and hit enter">
</form>And here’s the same form modified to search blogs 1, 2 and 4:
<form action="https://www.relevanssi.com/" method="get">
<input id="s" name="s" type="text" value="To search, type and hit enter">
<input name="searchblogs" type="hidden" value="1,2,4">
</form>The features are very limited in the multiblog search, none of the advanced filterings works, and there’ll probably be fairly serious performance issues if searching common words from multiple blogs. A single search may cause thousands of database calls if the search is made in more than ten blogs, so if your server can’t handle that, there’s going to be trouble. This only affects multisite searches, not single site searches on a multisite installation.
Sort posts by blog
If you want to have the search results sorted by the blog ID, add this to your site:
add_filter( 'relevanssi_hits_filter', 'rlv_sort_by_blog_id' );
function rlv_sort_by_blog_id( $hits ) {
$posts_by_blog = array();
if ( ! empty( $hits ) ) {
foreach ( $hits[0] as $hit ) {
if ( isset( $hit->blog_id ) ) {
if ( ! is_array( $posts_by_blog[ $hit->blog_id ] ) ) {
$posts_by_blog[ $hit->blog_id ] = array();
}
array_push( $posts_by_blog[ $hit->blog_id ], $hit );
}
}
}
if ( ! empty( $posts_by_blog ) ) {
// List blog IDs here in the order you want them appear in the results.
$sort_order = array( 3, 2, 1, 6, 5, 4 );
$hits[0] = array();
foreach ( $sort_order as $blog_id ) {
if ( is_array( $posts_by_blog[ $blog_id ] ) ) {
$hits[0] = array_merge( $hits[0], $posts_by_blog[ $blog_id ] );
}
}
}
return $hits;
}This will cause the search results to sort by blog ID. In order to get headings between the blogs, watch the $post->blog_id in the search results template and when you notice a change, print out a heading.
Using Toolset?
If you are using Toolset for displaying the search results, you’re going to have lots of trouble making multisite searching work. You can’t just switch the blog in the template, because Toolset doesn’t allow that, and besides the Toolset shortcodes wouldn’t necessarily work. Making this work will likely require rewriting Toolset shortcodes. If your use case is fairly straightforward, this may be feasible with a reasonable amount of effort. If possible, I would recommend just using regular WordPress templates, which are much easier to handle than Toolset Views.
Hi Mikko, I would like to know a bit more about the multisite install of Relevanssi. You say that on multisite many advanced features are not working. Is that always the case on multisite or only when you want to activate the search over multiple sites?
I am interested in getting the developer’s license, but if your plugin fails to work properly then I might as well get the normal license.
Hope you can shed a light on this…
When searching a single blog on a multisite network, all the features of Relevanssi are available. Features go missing only when multiple blogs are searched. Then you lose taxonomy restriction (because the categories, tags and other taxonomies are different on each blog), custom field restrictions, post type restriction (ok, this I could probably add to the multisite search) and synonyms.
However, the multisite search still searches all the content that regular search does: post content, titles, categories, tags, taxonomies, custom fields, excerpts… You just can’t restrict the search with these extra features.
Hi Mikko! Is it still true that synonyms don’t work on searches across multisite? I’ve been trying every way I can think of to use them, including duplicating the synonyms on both sites, and indexing the synonyms, and then I found this answer, but since it’s 9 years old, I thought I’d double check. Thanks.
William, yes, synonyms are still not used for multisite searching.
Thanks for your answer, Mikko.
So if I understand correctly, there is a separate setting within Relevanssi where you can enable multisite-search with and as long as you don’t enable that setting, all the features of Relevanssi are available. Is this correct?
Correct. You need to list the desired blogs in the searchblogs query variable, as mentioned in the post above.
Great! Thanks!
So I suppose I only need to worry about multisite performance issues if I want to search all the blogs at once? Having Relevanssi installed on all blogs but only doing individual blog searches would surely not be a problem?
Yes, single site search on a multisite blog is 100% identical to search on a single site.
Forgive me for being a newbie!
I’ve gone through and edited the .php for the plugin to add =1,2,3 after the 3 instances of ‘searchblogs’ that I found, saved, and reactivated, but it still doesn’t search across multisite… please tell me what I’m doing wrong to add a hidden input field…
Just a suggestion, but there might be others that are php newbies that are purchasing the premium plugin just for multisite search – if there was an easier way to activate this, or clearer instructions on what exactly to do ourselves, it would be awesome!
Thanks so much
You are not supposed to edit the plugin. Using the multisite search requires no PHP coding at all. All you need to do is to add a hidden input field “searchblogs” to your search form, like this: [input type=”hidden” name=”searchblogs” value=”1,2,3″ /] (replace the square brackets with angle brackets). I’ve added an example of this to the post.
Hi, I made a small network of 5 sites, one is populated with content and the other are almost empty. Relevanssi is installed, activated and index is built on all sites.
I try to run a network search but it seems that only the current site is returning results – it behaves like searchblogs argument does not exist at all.
I do not have any idea how to continue testing that feature.
Drop me an email to mikko @ mikkosaari.fi with more details about your site, and I’ll take a look.
Hi Mikko,
I’m using relevanssi premium developer version, I believe this is the best plugin for improving one of WordPress’ weakest features – search – good work!
I’m working on getting Multisite search working but currently on appear to get results from only one out of two network sites.
I have added the necessary hidden field and also the line [switch_to_blog($post->blog_id);] after the while statement. But I don’t have it working yet.
I read the following comment above “there is a separate setting within Relevanssi where you can enable multisite-search”.
I can’t see any multisite related options on the setting page under the settings menu. Should I be seeing a Multisite related option to turn on?
If I’m not missing any options on the settings page i will shared my search template code.
Thanks,
Peter
There’s no setting in the options page, it’s talking about the searchblogs query variable. Once you set up Relevanssi as a network plugin, index the contents on each site and make a search using the searchblogs query variable included, it should list results from all blogs. I just tried it on my test system and it seems to work just fine, I’m getting hits from both blogs.
Could you drop me an email to mikko @ relevanssi.com with more details, so I could take a look at your site?
Thanks Mikko – I’ll send an email now.
Hi Mikko,
I am having a similar issue as Peter where I have installed the plugin on the network, and indexed all the pages that I want it to search (IDs for blogs= 1,61, 96). And my searchform.php looks like this:
<form action="” id=”searchform” method=”get”>
However, when you search it only pulls up search results from the main site (ID for blog=1) and not for the other two blogs on the multisite. Another strange thing is that when I created the index for ID 61 and 96 there are no 25 most common words in the index. That may be part of the issue. Can you please help as I am completely stuck?!
Thanks,
Marisa
For some reason my code didn’t go through in the earlier message. Anyways I have put the following in the searchform.php file:
Yeah, WP will strip the code from your comment. Please use something like Pastebin to share the code.
What the “State of the index” says for the other two blogs? Looks like they weren’t indexed properly for some reason, yes.
Hello,
Thank you for such an extensive plugin! Just purchased the premium license and I’m running Relevanssi v1.7.2 on a multisite with 4 blogs. After setting it up I can successfully see results from all blogs in the network by searching on the primary website.
However, Search Hit Highlighting does not work 🙁 Prior to indexing each blog, I was able to add a class to the search highlighting, which worked and displayed correctly in the search results. After indexing each site, the highlighting span does not output in the_excerpt(). Also, the excerpt that outputs does not seem to include the search term. I.e. the_excerpt() is returning the first 450 characters of the post or page in question, then the search term is located around the 600th character.
Secondly, I added a word, ‘foobar’ to only one blog in the network. When I search, there are results given for blogs without that term. i.e. it seems Relevanssi is returning inaccurate results. This only occurs sometimes.
Do you have any ideas what I may be doing wrong?
Thanks!!
Also, for multisite use, I’ve noticed sometimes Relevanssi returns 0 results when there is clearly content to display. I.e. I added the term ‘501’ and ‘Maine’ to the homepage of one blog. However, searching for ‘501’ or ‘Maine’ yields 0 results.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks, you’ve found a bug that prevents search highlighting in multisite searches. It’s easy to fix. I’m working on 1.7.3 now, and I’ll include the fix there.
The excerpt building works as expected for me, so I don’t know what’s wrong on your site. What comes to the foobar thing… again, hard to say, without further debugging. Relevanssi shouldn’t return anything except posts containing the search term. I can’t reproduce the error on my site.
Hmm, are those missing terms actually indexed? Do they appear in the wp_relevanssi table on the blog they’re in?
Can you tell me where the site is, I’d like to take a look at it myself? Email me at mikko @ mikkosaari.fi, if you don’t want to mention it in public.
Hi
I’ve got about 500 blogs on a multisite install. Each blog has 30 posts of about 100 words each. So do you thunk its safe to use your plugin for multisite search on my site?
I don’t mind experimenting in a backup but am interested in what load I would be expecting to put in the server.
Frankly, no idea, but searching 500 blogs at the same time sounds like a lot of work. Expect some trouble.
I’m also not getting multisite search to work via these instructions. Just runs a normal search.
Pace, where is your site? I need to take a look at it.
I am having a problem now with the menu getting search results injected into it. Only on certain searches, not all. Have you seen that before?
Sorry Mikko, I had a problem with my search template. After restoring an older version this is working well. Thanks!
Mikko,
can you clarify the bit about correcting links when searching multiple blogs?
Where exactly would I paste this?
Thanks in advance,
Helen
Oh man, anyway, the code in this paragraph:
“Changes to search results templates”
I can’t figure out where to paste it in here: http://pastebin.com/WX0baArD
That code in the pastebin starts the while loop, so put it right after that bit.
I added the code right after the while loop statement but it’s not working, search result links are still wrong.
We have a subdirectory multisite setup, like this:
http://www.domain.com
http://www.domain.com/newsroom
When I search the newsroom site, it does return results from both websites. However, main domain.com articles link to *www.domain.com/newsroom/(article name)*, while it should omit the “newsroom” part from the URL.
Hope it’s clear? TIA
Well, then it’s not correct. Hard to say, since you showed me such a small snippet from you showed me. Anyway, you did buy the license with no support included, so this is as much as I can help you with this. Make sure the code is inside the main while loop, that’s where it should be, the first thing in there.
If any of you are trying to get the Relevanssi plugin working with the MySite InFocus theme here are the changes we had to make to get it to work in a mulit-site deployment.
1) in /usr/local/wordpress/wp-content/themes/your_blog/lib/functions/theme.php comment out the 4 occurrences of return query_posts( $query_string ); in function mysite_query_posts(). We had to do this to get the search results on the page
2) in /usr/local/wordpress/wp-content/themes/your_blog/loop.php add the switch_blog code as mentioned above. we had to remove it from the php tag. the end result looked like this: http://pastebin.com/VdSfgXpc
3) to override the default search on our site and replace it with a search form that search all of our sites we added /usr/local/wordpress/wp-content/themes/your_blog/searchform.php file that included our custom search form.
Hope that helps! Many thanks to Mikko for writing such a great plugin and helping us figure this out. Paying for the premium version of the plugin was well worth it and saved us hours of development time.
Would there be a way to use the post indexer plugin so that it doesn’t search accross all blogs but in one table?
I do not fully understand your question, but yes, you can search either all blogs, some blogs or just one blog.
Sorry, what I mean is could your plugin be combined with: http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/post-indexer/ the post indexer plugin which pulls all content from accross all blogs into one spot then you could search from there instead of all blogs. Would this be better for performance if you have more than 10 blogs?
Yes, doing searches from one place would be better for performance, but based on the description on the plugin page, I don’t think it is compatible with Relevanssi.
Hi Mikko – we have 2 installations of WP in the same domain http://www.domain.com and http://www.domain.com/blog…we have the paid for version of this plugin and want to know how to configure it to search across both installations of WP? Can you advise?
Thanks,
JB
Are they two separate installations, or a single multisite installation? If they are two separate installations, Relevanssi can’t search across both. If they are a single multisite installation, the necessary instructions are in this post.
They are 2 separate installations…I guess I misunderstood what ‘multisite’ meant. Do you have any advice for searching on both (is it even possible)? I am a php developer…how hard would it be for me to change the plugin to suit our needs? Should we consolidate the installations? Any thoughts?
Thanks again,
JB
Searching both is not possible. Well, I guess it might be possible, but it would be really difficult. I’ve had plans to make Relevanssi index and search things outside of a WP installation, but so far I haven’t figured out how to do it. Getting Relevanssi to use the index of another Relevanssi installation in the same database would be easier, but there are still lots of complications – you’d have to rewrite lots of helper functions to read the other database instead of the current site.
If you want to search both sites at the same time, the only option at the moment is to make it a single multisite installation (which of course has other problems).
Hello Mikko! I wanna use your search plugin on a language based multisite WP installation (DE/EN). Its activated for both sites. Settings done for both. Indexed for the german version very well. But if I try to build the index for the english version/site the index remains still empty. The settings for both are the same, controlled several times. Do you have any idea for me? Thanks a lot!
PS: I don’t wanna search over both sides the same time simultaneously.
best regards
Dirk
Are you using Premium? If not, it won’t work.
If you are using Premium, then make sure you’ve done the multisite installation correctly, so that there are separate databases for different sites.
Thanks for your fast feedback Mikko! No, just the basic version. Pity, but now I’ve just certainty. 😉
best regards
Dirk
Hi, I bought the premium version, and have spent hours trying to get the switch_to_blog to work properly. Please help!? I have the function right below the while loop. It changes all the urls when I use an integer, but not when a variable is used. So I know the function works. Everything else is working except the correct permalinks. Thanks in advance!
Send me a copy of your search results template to mikko @ relevanssi.com, please.
I read everything carefully here about WP multisite installation. But there is one question I couldn’t solve by myself:
Soon I will have the following situation: I have a WP multisite installation for two different languages of the same site (english and german) and I will buy the premium version of the plugin.
What kind of script snippets do I need to successfully index both sites when I DON’T want to search over BOTH sites (languages) the same time?
Do I just need to consider the paragraph “Changes to search results templates”?
How I understand it your manual above refers to install a cross-multisite search function?
You see I am little bit lost here 🙂
You need to do nothing. You only need changes to templates when you want to include results from several blogs on one results page.
That’s sounds fantastic! Really great to know. Many thanks for your strong support, Mikko! I really appreciate it. And it’s so good to have your plugin around because it’s so important to have useful search on your website.
Hello!
I have gotten the search function to automate the whole process of adding blog id:s to the value”1,2,3″ so it automatically searches through all indexed blogs. The script I have added looks into the database and fetches all blog_ids and prints out the ones that exist.
My question is, when I do a search for the word “dance” i.e. there are several hits on what appears to be links to posts with images and such. These have absolutely nothing to do with the searchword “dance”.
Any idea why this happens? I have only indexed my main site and one of the blogs. Have to index about 15 more. Could this be a reason?
Thanks.
Michael
Are you indexing attachments?
I wasn’t indexing them, but they had weight. But why are they coming up at all, they have nothing to do with what I’m searching for?
Ah, now they don’t come up from the blogs that are indexed. But attachments from blogs that aren’t indexed do? Is that because I haven’t indexed them?
The blogs that I don’t index don’t appear in the search results do they?
Michael
I’m not sure – Relevanssi should not bring up anything from blogs that haven’t been indexed, but perhaps it’s using wrong database and bringing up posts with IDs that match the query in other databases.
Anyway, make sure you don’t put unindexed blogs in the searchblogs variable – only list those blogs you actually want to search.
Any good suggestions on how I exclude the blogs from the searchblogs variable?
Just do not list them? List only the blogs that you want to search from.
The thing is I have to think about the new blogs being added in the future. I have used this solution to list all blogs that are gonna be created, so it also includes the ones that are testblogs.
Hence I’ve used the query SELECT blog_id FROM wp_blogs where blog_id >=1 to select all blogs that might be in the blog list.
I’ve tried to come up with an automated way to exclude blogs 2, 4 and 17 but i’m at a loss how to do it, I’d really appreciate it if you could lead me in the right direction.
I’ve tried using the sql query to exclude them, but it doesn’t work. I’m doing something wrong.
Well, you can get an array of blog_id’s from the query, keep another array of excluded blogs in a global variable and do an array_diff() between them to get only the non-excluded blog_id’s? Or include the exclusion list in the original MySQL query with “AND blog_id NOT IN ()”?
Thanks a lot =) That did it!
New question.
When I go to the second page of the search results my widgets disappear from that page. When I take away the switch_blog code in the while loop they are back. But then my permalinks won’t work as they should.
/page/2/?s=dansa&searchblogs=1%2C3%2C5%2C6%2C7%2C8%2C9%2C10%2C11
Where can I fix this issue?
Did you remember to switch back to the original blog? I’m guessing that’s what’s wrong.
Michael – did you ever find a solution for this? I’m having the exact same issue in a 30+ site multisite installation. I’ve verified that i have an index built on every site in my searchblogs parameter too… What i’ve been finding is that the post_ids of the false-positive results match the post_ids of the correct results but it’s showing an extra entry when that same post_id exists in another blog… Any insight would be appreciated.
– chuck
Do you have the switch_to_blog() parameter in the search results template?
Mikko – thanks for the reply. Yes, i am using switch_to_blog() in the search result page template. The more i look into it, i’m pretty sure that the false positive match in question is being returned by the ‘relevanssi_search_multi’ function in relevanssi.php. I have attached a var_dump of that return value (using a search query i know should only return 1 result). The first element in the ‘hits’ array is the one that is incorrect and the pattern i’m finding is that the false-positive matches always have the same post_id so maybe there is something not quite right about the usage of switch_to_blog within relevanssi? I haven’t been able to find it yet but i will continue debugging today. Thanks again.
For reference, i am running Relevanssi Premium v1.10.13
– chuck
Ok, next step I’d check what goes into $hitsbyweight and $post_objects arrays in relevanssi_search_multi().
Mikko – i found the issue and i’ve put a fix in the ‘relevanssi_search_multi’ function to fix it. On line 717 of relevanssi.php, i’ve added a condition to make sure the $matches array is not empty before proceeding so it now looks like: if (isset($doc_weight) && count($doc_weight) > 0 && !empty($matches))
What seemed to be happening is as it looped through multiple blogs and got to the point where it started retrieving the post_object (line 748), it would populate $post_object if that blog had the same post_id it was looking for regardless of whether there was a match/hit or not. Let me know if you have any questions and hopefully you can add this to the next version.
– chuck
Thanks!
Hello,
thanks for this possibility of doing a multisite search.
What can I do, when I want to give the users the choice of which blog they want to search through?
At the moment I have a select-field (with multiple attribute). But when choosing two possibilities (out of 4) the URL looks like “/?s=searchterm&searchblogs=1&searchblogs=4”, but it should look like “…&searchblogs=1,4”, shouldn’t it?
I also tried to make the field an array “”, but then the url looks like “/?s=searchterm&searchblogs%5B%5D=1&searchblogs%5B%5D=4”
So do you have any idea of how to combine these things, to make a choice possible? Or is their no possibility?
Thanks in advance!
Use ‘relevanssi_modify_wp_query’ filter hook to modify the searchblogs query variable before Relevanssi sees it.
Thanks a lot, that’s what I was searching for!
Here’s what I did: adapted the searchform, activated premium per blog, network activated the plugin, adapted search results template. When searching only the current site gets searched. What am I doing wrong?
The searchblogs variable appears in the URL when you search?
Can you show me the site? Since you’re a paying member, you can contact me through user support form.
Spoke too soon, seems to be working after I cleared the server caches. Thanks so far.
How about a restore_current_blog(); just before the endwhile? Some widgets in my sidebar behave very stangely if I don’t restore.
Sure, I don’t see why you can’t do that.
Shouldn’t I always do that? Ohterwise the context after the while loop might be another blog?
Yes, I suppose so. I don’t use Multisite, so I’m not particularly familiar with it.
How about a restore_current_blog(); just before the endwhile? Some widgets in my sidebar behave very stangely if I don’t restore.
Hello,
I am using this plugin for my company. I have the mult-blog search working according to this example. However, on blog 1, it returns 217 results if I search on it. In blog 2, it returns 21.
HOWEVER: If I search on both at the same time according to this example, I get 21 results from blog 2 and only 6 from blog 1. What’s this about?
Edit: I also don’t seem to be able to get the score of the blog 1 posts, where as the blog 2 posts return gracefully.
Are you running the latest version of Premium? Earlier versions have some bugs in the multisite search. Otherwise hard to say without taking a look at it; if you have a valid license, send a support request and if you can give me access to your site, I can take a look at it.
Hello again, Mr. Saari.
Yes, I am running the latest version of premium. After literally hours of debugging it seems to have fixed itself. The reason is absolutely baffling to me.
After debugging it with a clean wordpress install however, I managed to produce 2 issues. The missing search results issue has been hard to reproduce.
These steps were taken:
Clean wordpress install with standard 2016 theme.
Created multisite.
Created generic posts on both, and purposefully a few with identical names.
Added relevanssi and edited my search file etc. for it to work.
Searching blog 1 works perfectly.
Searching blog 2 works perfectly.
Searching blog 1 & 2 breaks score sorting and is missing 3 out of the 4 blog 1 post scores when searching with “searchblog” on ‘1,2’ first. When searching blog “2,1”, the issue would turn around and the scores of 4 out of my 5 blog 2 posts would be missing.
On my main site the issue fixed itself, but not the score issue. (Altho it does still sort correctly). The $post->revelance_score is simply an empty string on the “other blog”.
I hope this gives you some insight. For now, it’s not really an issue for us. The real issue is fixed for unknown reasons. (maybe indexing issues?)
Looks like there might be a bug in the code – it seems to me relevance_score is not being set at all in the multisite search. That’s odd; I’ll have to take a closer look at this, but it would certainly explain why it doesn’t appear.
Can you give me access to the site where you’ve set up the problem to appear? I could take a look at it.
We’re having troubles getting the right permalinks for custom post types. The links are correct for all sites and normal posts, but not custom post type. This has happened out of the blue, we had it working in the beginning.
What is your theme using to print out the permalinks?
Hi Mikko,
See attachement. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6098b997575ce5500ff8dca60cf3a16c2f1fc663dc0351b668343493312a9389.png
Ah, that’s the problem. get_permalink() doesn’t go through the filters that make sure the links are correct. Use relevanssi_get_permalink() instead.
Change it, but it did not make any difference. The links are still incorrect.
I think the problem already happens when indexing, that for some reason it is not indexing the correct url’s, how does relevanssi index?https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2cf5f456040b884b1709ce40938ccb82568edcdd7a925746f1333d3c84b0eec2.png
Hmm… actually, relevanssi_get_permalink() does not really apply there – it only solves cases where the post is a taxonomy term or an user, to make sure the link is correct.
Is this actually a Relevanssi problem? Do you get the correct permalink without Relevanssi? Relevanssi gets the permalink from get_permalink(), and if get_permalink() is providing a wrong permalink, then what can Relevanssi do?
Relevanssi doesn’t index the links, it just gets what WordPress provides.
At least with relevanssi_get_permalink() you can add a filter function on relevanssi_permalink filter hook that corrects the link and adds the “glossary” in the middle of the URL.
Hm okay, then I’m in the blank. The problem occurs only when searching. If you instead navigate to the page, then the permalink is correct.
Attach is an example of the post “.aspx”. Left you see the search result where the /glossary/ is missing in the permalink. Right you see the permalink displayed on the archive page. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/272e867fbc22aa60203f7457155ba4d4c78df122237eeeff7534a3d5826f3b23.png
We now tried setting up a test environment, and here we can see that /wiki/ redirects to /wiki/glossary/ – works like intended – but on our live environment that redirect does not happen. Is the redirect done by Relevanssi or should I look elsewhere for the problem?
Hi.
Installed plugin “SearchWP Live Ajax Search”, works perfectly with Relevanssi. But I need on main blog the search results from another blog. Hidden input he does not understand, simply pass a parameter does not work:
$wp_query->query_vars[‘searchblogs’] = ‘3’;
relevanssi_do_query($wp_query);
How can I do this other method?
Thanks.
As far as I can tell, it is not possible to get results from another blog with SearchWP Live Ajax Search. But I’d ask on their support forum to be sure.
If you do not want to add the searchblogs query param to the search form, you can simply add it to the search object after the wp_query and before relevanssi_do_query like so
$search = new WP_Query( array(
‘s’=> $qv,
‘posts_per_page’=> 30,
‘paged’ => $paged,
));
$search->query_vars[‘searchblogs’] = ‘1,7,8,9,16,18’;
relevanssi_do_query($search);
We’re using Relevanssi on our multisite network and it is working really well! Thanks for that! But we now want to have a pretty URLs instead of: /?s=html&searchblogs=1%2C3%2C10%2C5%2C6%2C7%2C9%2C11
Is it somehow possible to hide all the blog IDs while keeping the functionality?
Sure. You can use pre_get_posts filter to set the searchblogs parameter, that way it shouldn’t appear in the URL.
Sounds great! Would you be albe to point us in the directing of how to do this, or someone that could guide us?
add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’, ‘rlv_add_searchblogs’);
function rlv_add_searchblogs($query) {
$query->set(“searchblogs”, “1,3,10,5,6,7,9,11”);
}
Something like that.
Thank you very much! That code is working for our need 🙂
The WordPress core function “get_permalink” returns a URL with the current site’s domain even if it is from another blog. I included the switch_to_blog function as I should but the search results template returned by “get_template_part” is where the “get_permalink” function is executed. Any suggestions?
Does get_permalink() return the correct domain, if you call it right after the switch_to_blog() and not inside the get_template_part() template?
No it doesn’t.
while ( have_posts() ) :
switch_to_blog($post->blog_id);
the_post();
echo the_permalink(); // always a domain for the site the search page is on, not the domain for the site whose id is $post->blog_id.
restore_current_blog();
endwhile;
You’re trying to switch to the post blog before you define the post. Move the switch_to_blog() after the the_post().
That worked Mikko, thank you so much for your help!!
Hi Mikko
I am considering purchasing the premium version of the plugin.
I have a multisite intalled. All sites have the same taxonomies – will they still not be indexed properly?
Many thanks
Rebecca, the taxonomies will be indexed as usual. You just can’t filter multisite searches using the taxonomies, even if the taxonomies match between sites – they’re still different taxonomies, even if they have the same names. You can use taxonomy filters in single site searches.
Dear Mikko,
Thank you for this fantastic plugin! 🙂
I’m working on a woocommerce network and I would like to use the relevanssi pro. The normal search is working well, but I have problem on the woo search page (&post_type=product). The images, urls and other data are 404. I tried to modify the woo search loop, but it was unsuccessful. Do you have any idea?
Trueqap, take a look at the URLs to the images: what’s wrong with them? Why are they 404? How is it different from the correct URL?
The permalink and the thumbnail is not switch to the another blog and it’s same with the current page. The title is working well.
Sorry, the image is missing the link is the 404 only.
Have you added the switch_to_blog() command inside the loop? Without it the context is not correct and the links and images do not point to the right blog.
🙂 Yea, just not so easy to modify the woo core loop.
It’s working well, with my hook:
function woosearch_relevassi( $post ) {
switch_to_blog($post->blog_id);
return $GLOBALS[''];
restore_current_blog();
}
add_action( 'the_post', 'woosearch_relevassi' );
That’s not going to work, it’ll never run the restore_current_blog() because it’s after the return line. It’ll get mixed up with the blogs eventually.
Yea, it’s true. Beta version 🙂
it’s correct. Not so elegant, but working!
function woosearch_relevassi_start( $post ) {
if ( is_post_type_archive( 'product' ) || is_singular( 'product' ) ) {
$GLOBALS['product'] = switch_to_blog($post->blog_id).wc_get_product( $the_post );
return $GLOBALS['product'];
}
}
function woosearch_relevassi_end() {
restore_current_blog();
}
add_action( 'the_post', 'woosearch_relevassi_start' );
add_action('woocommerce_after_shop_loop_item', 'woosearch_relevassi_end', 10);
Need to modify the filter widgets and the cart button and it’s done.
Where do I place the code in Avada when modifying the search form and to search across multisite?
Melodie, first of all, do not edit the theme files directly. All your changes will be overwritten by the next theme update. Instead, create a child theme (if you don’t know how, Child Theme Creator is a fine tool).
Copy the searchform.php file from the Avada folder to the child theme and edit that file. Add the
<input>tag for thesearchblogsparameter in that file, anywhere inside the<form>tag is fine.For the changes to the search results template, you need to copy the templates/blog-layout.php file to your child theme (it needs to go inside the templates folder in the child theme as well). There, after this line:
add
and before this line:
add
Hello,
I’m using Newspaper theme from ThemeForest and would like to know where do I put the code for multi site search
Thank you very much for your help.
Greg, in the WordPress template hierarchy, search results come from search.php, but if that file doesn’t exist, then it’s the index.php that generates the search results.
Thank you for quick reply.
Unfortunatelly I can’t find the loop you are talking about while (have_posts()).
Greg, the loop may be split in many different files. It’s best if you ask the theme support; they should be able to help you with this.
Hi Mikko,
With debugging on, the ‘rlv_search_all_blogs’ function throws this error:
`Notice: Undefined variable: tag_boost in /Users/petermumfordaddminaccount/Documents/IIS Dev/network/wp-content/plugins/relevanssi-premium/premium/search.php on line 395`
I can ignore it, but maybe it can be fixed easily?
Peter, are you using the latest version? This should already be fixed in the latest version (2.1.6.1).
Hi Mikko! I was not using the latest.. now I am. tag_boost is fixed. But now I get another undefined variable:
Undefined variable: fuzzy in /Users/petermumfordaddminaccount/Documents/IIS Dev/network/wp-content/plugins/relevanssi-premium/premium/search-multi.php on line 326
Thanks, that’ll be fixed in the next version.
Hello, I’m looking for an alternative to general search in WPMU woocommerce. The difference is that in the different stores we have the products registered with the same description, category, tags, changes only the price, and the link …
It would be possible to use the multi-site search option for this situation, there are 5000 products in total, counting the products with price variation.
Tks.
Joao, I suppose you could. Relevanssi can get you product results from across all sites in the multisite network. If you want the results grouped by product, that would require some work on the templates, but is definitely possible.
Hello Mikko,
I try to use the multisite functions. One question is, if you could give an example for the headings of the blog when sorting results by blog:
I use the the GeneratePress. Thanks a lot.
Daniel
Daniel, see relevanssi_hits_filter instructions, there’s an example of headings between categories. The principle is the same, there it’s just looking for post type and category, while you want to look for
$post->blog_id.How that all applies to GeneratePress is something I don’t know.
would this work for a multi network?
Hari, if you mean the WP Multi Network plugin, probably no.
Hello Mikko,
searching for posts in my multisite works well. But if I search for custom post types, it does not work.
Ths is the modified part in my themes search.php (GeneratePress) is:
blog_id);
get_template_part( 'content', 'search' );
restore_current_blog();
endwhile;
Any idea?
oh, killed some parts:
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
switch_to_blog($post->blog_id);
get_template_part( ‘content’, ‘search’ );
restore_current_blog();
endwhile;
Any idea?
Look inside content-search.php, that’s where the critical parts are.
well Mikko, looks like the theme I use is different. I have no file like that.
That’s the template part your theme is calling right there. If it’s not in the theme root folder, it can also be inside ‘template-parts’ directory. If no content-search.php file exists, WP will then fall back to content.php and use that.
Dear Mikko Saari,
You’re plugin looks amazing, but I do have a question related to the Multisite usage. Let’s say I have a site that has three subsites (in folders). They all contain blogposts and pages. I’m using ACF for the setup for the pages. Does this plugin fully searches (with all functionality) into these pages as well? Or is it thesame with the posts, that it can’t completely be used?
Klaas, Relevanssi should have no problems searching the ACF field content across sites. Using meta_queries should also work. The same applies to both posts and pages, both should just work.
Is there a way of making Relevanssi Pro work across platforms? We have 18 websites on one platform, and another six websites, each on their own platform. It’s not possible to migrate the websites into the same platform. Is there a way of indexing our ‘external’ websites and serving them in our search?
Júlio, sorry, but no, that’s simply just not possible. Relevanssi uses WordPress methods to access the content, and that just doesn’t work across installations.
Thanks, Mikko! 🙂
How can I sort by relevance score across multisites mixed up rather than by subsite IDs?
Cheolwoo Lim, what you want is the default setting in Relevanssi, and requires no adjustment.
Greetings. I’m not too familiar with Multisite WordPress. I have three different WordPress websites on three different GoDaddy WordPress Managed hosting purchases (but within the same GoDaddy account).
Will the multisite Relevanssi Premium search work with these three sites, where I can do a search on one of the sites, yet it searches all three sites and results from all three websites appear on the page? Thanks.
Sean, no; that’s not a multisite. Multisite WordPress would have all three sites within one WordPress installation.
I am currently managing two WordPress sites: the main domain at https://boulderweekly.com/ and a subdomain at https://archives.boulderweekly.com/. I want to implement a search functionality that allows users to search for content across both the main site and the subdomain.
Specifically, I would like to know if it’s possible to display search results from the subdomain on the main domain’s search results page. This would provide a seamless experience for users searching for older articles from the subdomain while they are on the main site.
Dev, this is possible if both of these sites are in the same WordPress multisite installation. If they are separate WordPress installations, crossover searching is not possible.
https://i.imgur.com/o5rdQj4.png
Both website are in same server
Unfortunately, same server is not enough. They need to be within the same multisite installation, otherwise Relevanssi can’t have access from one to the other.