You can download Ajax Search Lite from the WordPress plugin repository.
The Index Table
One of the most commonly asked questions about the Pro version is what the Index Table Engine is and whether you need it.
You have probably seen a “keyword cloud” before, where the most common keywords in a text are represented with a higher font size, the less common ones with lower font sizes, and so on—all organized into a cloud shape.
The index table is basically that, a word cloud, where each keyword in every single one of your posts is organized into a table based on its occurrences. Not only that, but the keywords are converted and optimized in various ways to make sure all sorts of matching are possible. This results in a very effective and very precise matching system, where the most relevant matches are very likely the ones that you would expect as a human.
Pros of the Index Table Engine
- Better word isolation for fuzzy matching
- Much better performance for larger databases
- File content indexing and search
- Support for extracting shortcode and editor block contents for searching
- Support for synonyms
- Support for automated singularization and pluralization for English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Norwegian languages
- Support for searching complex custom field contents—such as ACF repeaters
- Support for keyword exceptions
More Search Sources
While the Lite version supports searching any custom post type, in the Pro version you can do much more. In most cases, searching post types—such as posts, pages, products, etc.—is more than sufficient; sometimes you may need a bit more.
Content types supported in Ajax Search Pro
All of these content types can be returned as results with the Pro version:
- All custom post types (also supported in Lite)
- Categories, Tags and any other taxonomy terms, such as product categories, attributes etc..
- Users
- Media files – PDF, Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Text documents and many more
- BuddyPress Groups and Activity
Search Filters
The Lite version supports some basic category and generic filter functionality, while the Pro version has much more extensive support for all kinds of search filters:
- Filters by Taxonomy Terms – this includes categories, tags as well as product categories, attributes etc..
- Filters by Custom Fields – wether regular or ACF fields, Ajax Search Pro can handle many types of filters from simple text to range sliders, drop-downs or even date filters
- Post type filters – searches with multiple post type sources can greatly benefit from a post type filter
- Date filters – filtering by content publish dates
Over 100+ themes with customizations vs the Lite
We included the best and most used themes in the Lite version, but the Pro version offers even more:
- Over 100 ready made themes, fully customizable
- Options to change colors, margins, widths, heights and everything you may need
- 4 different results layouts: vertical, horizontal, isotopic and polaroid
This is only to name a few of the features. The Lite version is a ready-made solution; the Pro version offers a boost over that, with a hint of more customizability.
More inclusions, more exclusions
The Lite version offers a very convenient way to exclude content by categories or even by ID. These are the most popular ways to manage search content.
The Pro version takes this further with many more options to control where the search extends:
- Exclusions and Inclusions by Dates
- Exclusions and Inclusions by Authors
- Exclusions and Inclusions by Taxonomy Terms – including categories, tags, product attributes and more..
- Manual inclusions and exclusions by content IDs
- Exclusions by custom field (post meda) values – such as stock status or price and more
Prioritizing results
One of the lesser-known perks of Ajax Search Pro is the Group and Individual Priorities feature. This is a very extensive interface to manage which content you need to prioritize.
With group priorities, you can choose groups of post types by categories/taxonomy terms as well as by custom field value rules to be prioritized over other results.
Individual priorities can override group priorities if you want specific posts or post types to be above everything else.
Summary
While it may seem that Ajax Search Lite might be inferior to Ajax Search Pro, this is very far from the truth. Ajax Search Lite is developed on the same exact codebase as the Pro version and includes the most popular features of the Pro version.
I always recommend trying Ajax Search Lite first; it is a completely free plugin without any limitations. Even better, it is completely standalone, so you can switch back from the Pro version at any time—they don’t depend on each other.
I hope this article summarizes the main differences between the two plugins.