After downloading Lift, Search for WordPress, you will need to install the plugin. There are three ways to do this:
To use Lift you will need an Amazon Web Services account. AWS CloudSearch is a paid service and will require a credit card. You should take some time to look over the documentation- especially the sections on CloudSearch.
Before you can start using Lift, the plugin needs to be activated and configured.
Enter a search domain name. This must be a unique string to your AWS account. The domain name string can only contain the following characters: a-z (lowercase), 0-9, and - (hyphen). Uppercase letters and underscores are not allowed. The string has a max length of 28 characters.
Click "Save Domain". If the domain does not exist, Lift will ask if you would like the domain created for you. Click "yes" and the plugin will create and configure everything for you.
After installation and configuration, Lift will use your theme's default search template to provide CloudSearch results with no customization needed.
Lift provides the following additional features:
Use the instructions below to customize Lift's additional features to work with your theme.
Lift's search form adds date, post type, and sorting filters to your search returns. These can be seen below:
To use Lift's search form, you'll need to add the following template tag to your header or sidebar. You'll need to to remove the default WordPress tag.
<?php
if(
function_exists("lift_search_form") ){
lift_search_form();
}
?>
The Lift Search Form provides several WordPress filters to modify the search form filters and their contents:
lift_filters_default_fieldslift_filters_form_field_objectslift_search_formThis modifies the output of lift_search_form(). For example, you can prepend the form with a header tag. As shown below:
add_filter('lift_search_form', function($html){
return "<h2>My Custom
Header</h2>" . $html;
});
If you want to use Lift's search results in your current look-and-feel you need to replace the loop in your theme's search.php template with the following. This should replace the code block that typically looks like: <?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?> [rest of loop template] <?php endif; ?>
<?php
if( function_exists("lift_loop")
){
lift_loop();
}
?>
Lift includes a search form widget. You can add this to
your sidebar by navigating to the Widgets admin page (Appearance
> Widgets).
If you are using the Lift search form or Lift results, you can open the lift-styles.css in your text editor and edit the commented lines.
NOTE: Thumbnail images will auto-size in the WordPress theme (if you're using the search results loop).
By default, Lift will index posts and pages. To change this--
for example to add custom post types or prevent a post type from
being indexed--use the
lift_indexed_post_types filter.
For example, to add a custom post type named my-custom-post-type to be indexed:
add_filter('lift_indexed_post_types', function( $post_types ){
$post_types[] = 'my-custom-post-type';
return $post_types;
});
You can find the Lift dashboard under the WordPress admin's "Settings" menu.
In the center you will find the controls for the automatic document syncing. These control the time interval between batches. You can change the interval, turn automatic indexes on and off and force an index to run. You can also get to Lift Settings.