wbcomdesigns/post-indexer

Post Indexer

INACTIVE NOTICE: This plugin is unsupported by WPMUDEV, we've published it here for those technical types who might want to fork and maintain it for their needs.

Translations

Translation files can be found at https://github.com/wpmudev/translations

Post Indexer for Multisite makes network wide search and share possible. Unlock new ways to find and display content by bringing posts from any site on your network into one index.

Create a global index for your network that only pulls the content you want added.

Expand What Multisite Can Do

We built Post Indexer to work in tandem with other plugins that can harness its power. While Multisite is a powerful tool, one of its biggest limitations is its inability to search and display content from site-to-sites across your network.

We’ve built a huge collection of plugins that can do it, but those plugins need a single index of posts to pull from. This is where Post Indexer comes in. Post Indexer does more than just build an index. You can exclude certain subsites from being indexed, index a particular site right away, index pages as well as posts, index posts manually, choose a timeframe for when posts are indexed and choose posts types to be indexed per site.

All The Stats You'll Ever Need

Make sure everything is set to your liking at a glance.

Post Indexer Summary

See a quick list view of indexed post types and most sites indexed.

Indexed Post Types

A clean simple pie chart breaks down percentage of each post types indexed.

Recently Indexed Posts

Access recently indexed posts with a click. See site and post name.

Most Indexed Sites

See which sites are most active and how post types are being used across your network.

Reimagine What Multisite Can Do

We’ve developed a robust collection of plugins that work around Post Indexer to extend Multisite’s capabilities.

• Reader – Turn your Multisite into a community, complete with Tumblr, WordPress.com and Edublogs-style “Follow” features
• Anti-splog – Stop splogs in their tracks
• Blogs Directory – A fully searchable, avatar inclusive, automatic and rather good-looking directory of all the sites in your network
• Global Site Search – Activate global search across all of the sites on your network with ease
• Global Site Tags – Display global site tags for your entire network
• Tag feed – Display a list of posts that have been tagged with a specific tag or category
• Recent Global Posts – Display a list of recent posts anywhere on your site using a simple shortcode or template function
• Recent Global Posts Feed – Create an RSS feed of all the latest posts on your network
• Live Stream – Display your own slick animated Live Stream Widget
• User Reports – Track user posts across your network

Expand Global Comments

Pair Post Indexer with our Comment Indexer plugin and expand your global index to include comments from across your network.

• Global Author Comments Feed – Display a global feed of comments from a single author made across multiple sites on the network

• Recent Global Comments Widget – Display the latest comments from across your entire network

• Recent Global Comments Feed – Provide a RSS feed of the latest comments on your network

• Live Stream – Display your own slick animated live stream of comments

• User Reports – Track user comments across your network

A Favorite with Multisite Developers

Post Indexer is ready to power your next global post plugin. Add a new global post table behind the scenes in tandem with other plugins and display post content from every site on your network.

Post Indexer provides robust statistics that help keep your network running at optimum performance.

Rebuild your index and include specific custom post types.

Unharness the Power

Create global post feeds, make all the content across your network fully searchable, use global tags – Post Indexer eliminates limitations created by individual site tables. Plus, it works with custom post types so you can add everything from network-wide reading to a global shopping cart for your eCommerce network.

Complete Diagnostic Tools

The Processor Information module that comes packaged with Post Indexer will ensure indexing on your site runs at 100% and will let you know if the plugin runs into any problems pulling content from your subsites. We’ve included everything you need to make sure posts are synced exactly as they should be.

Usage

For help with installing plugins please refer to our Plugin installation guide.

To Use:

This plugin by itself does not provide any features to your users. It's simply a backend plugin that can be used to build other features. An example plugin demonstrating how the Post Indexer can be used is found here. 1. Install the Post Indexer 2. Visit Plugins in your Network Admin dashboard and Network Activate the Post Indexer plugin there.  

The Dashboard

From your Network Admin section,  you can access the Post Indexer dashboard by going to Settings > Post Indexer. You should then land on a dashboard with three tabs at the top that look like this:

When you first install the plugin, under the first tab labeled Statistics, you will probably not see anything. By default, the Post Indexer will only index posts created after installation. However, if you would like to index previously published posts, you can do so by going to the third tab -- Rebuild Index. As the instructions in the Rebuild Index section warn, "This may take a considerable amount of time and could impact the performance of your server." If you would like to index only selected sites, or if you would like to prevent certain sites from being indexed, then see the next section.  

Selecting Individual Sites to Index

If you like, you can choose to manually index only certain sites, and you can also choose to prevent individual sites from being indexed at all. You can do this from the Network Admin area by going to Sites > All Sites. You should see a new column added here titled Indexing.

From here you have a choice to:

• Disable/Enable indexing
• Edit the settings
• Rebuild the index for that site only
• See statistics for that site only

  Just click on the option you'd like for that individual site/blog.

 

Choosing Post Types and Index Lifetime

Finally, in the Global Settings tab, you can choose which post types you'd like to index (Posts, Pages, etc.), as well as how long  you would like the index to go back.

 

Checking to Make Sure It Works

Once you either add more posts or rebuild the index, you should start to see statistics about which sites have been indexed. Keeping in mind that this plugin is only used in conjunction with others, you might also check out a plugin like the Recent Global Posts Widget. If everything is working as it should, the Recent Global Posts Widget should populate with recent posts from your index. (Keep in mind that these other plugins draw from the index that the Post Indexer creates. And so if you have disabled indexing for a site, the posts from that site will not be included when a plugin like the Recent Global Posts Widget goes looking for it.)  

Troubleshooting Potential Problems

If you run into problems, you may want to check for the following: First, make sure the post is published on a site with privacy set to "Allow search engines to index this site." (Found in the regular admin area -- not the Network Admin area -- under Settings > Reading.) Next, there are a few config options at the top of post-indexer.php. Unless you're in a very solid dedicated environment, we recommend leaving them as is. Check to Make Sure The Tables Installed Correctly: **