PrismSearch
PrismSearch builds a custom inverted index for fast frontend search and provides a live AJAX search box through automatic theme integration, a native block or a simple shortcode.
Features
- Fast inverted-index based search.
- Frontend AJAX search shortcode.
- Automatic integration with Twenty Twenty-Five, Storefront and Astra.
- Automatic replacement of standard classic and block-based WordPress search forms.
- Native dynamic PrismSearch block.
- Search indexing for posts, pages and public custom post types.
- Indexing for selected public taxonomy terms.
- Frontend metadata display in live search results.
- Configurable NLP language for tokenization.
- Fuzzy typo matching fallback.
- Optional replacement for the default WordPress search results page.
- Search rate limiting for live search requests (50 requests per IP address per minute by default; configurable or disable with 0).
- Live index updates when selected content is saved, updated, trashed or deleted.
- Optional frontend.css loading for theme authors who want to write their own CSS.
- Optional Enter key redirect to the full WordPress search results page.
- Optional browser voice input through the Web Speech API.
- Template overrides from your theme.
Supported NLP languages
PrismSearch includes NLP processors for the following language codes. The selected language is used for tokenization and search processing.
- English: en
- German: de
- French: fr
- Spanish: es
- Portuguese: pt
- Italian: it
- Dutch: nl
- Danish: da
- Swedish: sv
- Norwegian: no
- Finnish: fi
- Polish: pl
- Czech: cs
- Slovak: sk
- Slovenian: sl
- Croatian: hr
- Serbian: sr
- Bulgarian: bg
- Romanian: ro
- Hungarian: hu
- Greek: el
- Turkish: tr
- Russian: ru
- Ukrainian: uk
- Lithuanian: lt
- Latvian: lv
- Estonian: et
- Indonesian: id
- Vietnamese: vi
- Japanese: ja
- Chinese: zh
- Korean: ko
- Arabic: ar
- Persian: fa
- Hebrew: he
- Thai: th
Some CJK and script-based languages use basic normalization and token support. Test the selected language processor with your own content before production use.
Shortcode
Add the live search box anywhere with:
[prismsearch]
Optional shortcode attributes:
[prismsearch min_chars="3" limit="10" placeholder="Search..."]
Enable or disable Enter key redirect per shortcode:
[prismsearch enter_redirect="1"]
[prismsearch enter_redirect="0"]
Enable or disable voice input per shortcode:
[prismsearch voice_search="1"]
[prismsearch voice_search="0"]
Voice input uses the configured NLP language as the browser speech-recognition language. Developers can override it with the prismsearch_speech_language filter. Mozilla Firefox and Opera do not currently provide a usable SpeechRecognition implementation for this feature, so voice search is unavailable in those browsers and the microphone button remains hidden.
Automatic theme integration
Automatic theme integration is disabled by default and can be enabled under Settings > PrismSearch > Frontend.
- Twenty Twenty-Five: inserts the native PrismSearch block after the navigation in header template parts and header patterns. The block can be moved or removed in the Site Editor.
- Storefront: replaces the built-in header product search at the same Storefront hook position.
- Astra: replaces Astra Search elements added through the Header Builder.
- Other themes: replaces existing standard classic WordPress search forms and Core Search blocks. It does not create a new search position when the theme has no search form.
WooCommerce products must be selected under Content and the index must be built before product results are available. Existing content-type selections are never changed automatically.
Developers can disable automatic integration with:
add_filter( 'prismsearch_automatic_theme_integration', '__return_false' );
Privacy and external services
PrismSearch performs indexing, tokenization and search locally inside WordPress. It does not load remote frontend or admin assets.
When voice search is disabled, PrismSearch does not access the visitor microphone. When voice search is enabled and the visitor activates the microphone button, speech recognition is handled by the browser Web Speech API. Depending on the browser and platform, audio may be processed locally or by a service selected by the browser vendor. PrismSearch does not receive or store microphone audio; it only receives the recognized text in the search input and submits it as a normal search query.
Included third-party libraries
PrismSearch includes Select2 4.1.0 for enhanced admin multi-select fields. Select2 is MIT licensed; the license file is included at assets/vendor/select2/LICENSE.md. The Select2 source project is available at https://github.com/select2/select2.
Templates and styling
PrismSearch loads its default frontend stylesheet unless disabled in the settings.
Developers can also disable the default stylesheet with:
add_filter( 'prismsearch_load_frontend_css', '__return_false' );
Template files can be overridden in your theme by placing files in:
template/prismsearch/
For example:
template/prismsearch/item.php