WordPress 3.7 incorporates some new, neat features which will save you time and enhance usability, and both of are quite important. Except for all of that, new search improvements also are remarkable. They take WordPress to the level where you even can make use of its search on a site without embarrassment.
Change and innovation are always expected on the World Wide Web. Sometimes they still can be fast paced surprisingly. Similar happened with WordPress. Its 3.6 Version was released in August only, and just few months later, its 3.7 version is here.
This new version is packed with lots of new features which are certain to make WordPress much better. I’ll include the big ones only in this post. However, this new WordPress 3.7 represents more than few new features. This had the greatest turnaround of any other version in WordPress’s history, but it’s arguably the largest update also in long time.
Read on to learn more about WordPress 3.7:
Automatic Updates
Now, gone are those days of updating to newest build of any version manually. Gone are those days of wasting your time updating for the security fixes. So is with WordPress 3.7, all things are automatic.
It seems easy on surface and it may not even be huge leap. However, time is money now, and the automatic updates will also save time for everybody who runs his site on WordPress.
It also will ensure speedy updates when security patch come out, perhaps making WordPress much safer in process. Automatic updates only will update to diverse builds of same version you have installed already. You still will have to choose to upgrade manually to major release (for instance, 3.8).
Improved Password Meter
A clean security update is improved password strength measurement. The more conventional, old password strength meter now is replaced with the Dan Wheeler zxcvbn, which first was adopted by Dropbox. The zxcvbn employs better algorithm which measures strength of passwords more realistically.
Other Languages
Language functionality of WordPress’s will recover with 3.7. If you’re running WordPress in any other language than English, the installation will download any other available translations automatically for the official default WordPress theme.
The web is global phenomenon and the WordPress powers almost 20 percent of it, thus it makes good sense that they’re now taking up steps to make this a simpler platform even for the ones who aren’t making use of it in English.
Unveiling New WordPress Search
Let’s now talk about what really has got me excited: The WordPress search is now getting a major renovate.
Given that everybody surfs the web via search primarily (i.e. Google), I think that having civilized search functionality on the site is must. WordPress never has delivered on this front in past, but is it about to change now?
Old Deficiencies
Consensus long has held that WordPress’s search was lacking – tremendously lacking. Even in the year 2008, Joost Valk pointed that “WordPress default’s search kind of sucks.”
It’s hardly got any better ever since – since then, 5 years have passed without any major updates to WordPress’s search functionality.
The issues with WordPress search tend to be numerous. Its search algorithm looks for only an accurate match to user’s query – nothing more, nothing less. That is a completely outdated method of doing things, however it isn’t the worst aspect even of search experiences.
Search results are sort in chronological order, irrespective of relevance. Instead of getting results containing most relevant posts, the users get those which are the most current.
In addition, there is no search filtering or refinement option: you can’t search in a specific search or category within your search result.
Why This New WordPress 3.7 Version Is Great Improvement?
Not all the issues have been addressed fully. But while search changes might not be great, they haven’t got as much of buzz as they deserved. For the very first time in many years, WordPress search tends to be seeing some important change.
For one, the search is much more flexible in the terms of what combination of keywords it actually looks for and the ways it arranges the results. Here is new ordering sense:
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Match complete sentence to post title.
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Search for all search term in the post titles.
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Search for search terms in the post title.
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Match complete sentences in the posts content.
Significantly, search results will be ordered now by relevance instead of date! That alone boosts the qualities of search experience dramatically.
WordPress search might not be the finest of the finest, but it’s now functional and usable – a big transform from past and reason for enthusiasm.
What about the Other Search Options?
When this WordPress search sucked, the people didn’t put up just with it and hoped for a modification. Driven by ingenuity and necessity, WordPress users sought or developed their search solutions.
Craving search power of the web search’s powerhouse, lots of people turned to Google’s Custom Search that provides functionality of world’s premier search engines to the smallest blogs even. Others wanted WordPress plugin to go with their needs, represented by the brilliant Relevanssi.
So let’s take a closer and quick look at the two alternatives and observe how they now stack up WordPress 3.7 gets with it better native search option.
Google’s Custom Search
Since so long, WordPress’s search was so poor that WordPress.org even didn’t make use of it. In its place, it used Google’s Custom Search.
There in fact used to be the plugin which could integrate the custom search in your site; however, it is out of date now. Nowadays you’ll need to implement code yourself.
Relevanssi
It actually is plugin created for WordPress specifically. It replaces standard WordPress search by a much better search engine having lots of configurable options and features.
It ordered the searches by relevance very long before WordPress team got close to actually doing it, and plugin still has comparative benefit of allowing you search for the phrases with quotes.
Other exclusive feature is its ability to search entire website – not only pages and posts. Relevanssi enables the users to search tags, categories, comments, and even the custom fields. Moreover, fuzzy matching can search for words which partially match with search terms – stellar functionalities which keeps human elements of searches in the mind.
Relevanssi has leg up on the WordPress search clearly, and is perhaps as good or advanced as to the Google Custom Search. Eventually, for those people who need much more sophisticated search functionalities and willing to go via the hassles of installing plugin, Relevanssi is really a great selection – even with the WordPress’s search update.