[wp-docs] dedicated Codex search function

[Lorelle on WordPress]

This would be so awesome. Our MediaWiki is integrated into the entire site,
and at one time we had search options set that when you are in the Codex
you only search the Codex and when you are out of the Codex, your search
covers everything. The attempt has been made to open the search to
everything, and it is a mess with Google. A perfect search result would be
one that divided up the resulting content into Codex, Forum, etc. giving
more choice control to the user.

That's the goal, but is it possible between the WordPress and MediaWiki
interfaces? It sounds like you think it is.

The Docs team only has so much control over these things, so hopefully
someone with the ability to engage at the higher authority level on this
will jump in. You got my support. This has been a thorn for a long time.
Thanks for being willing to take it on.

Lorelle




On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Nathaniel Taintor <
goldenapplesdesign at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The existing search functionality on wordpress.org has been bugging me,
> and apparently other people as well, for quite a while, and I would like to
> work on helping to fix that - especially in helping to provide a specific
> Codex search functionality.
>
> MediaWiki already has a decent search ability, which redirects to the
> found page if an exact match for the search term is found in a page title.
> Exposing this functionality would be an improvement over the current
> situation: eg. compare the results of "
> http://codex.wordpress.org/?search=posts" vs "
> http://wordpress.org/search/posts". In my opinion, just offering a "Codex
> search" box which used the MediaWiki search results, rather than the Google
> results that appear now, would be helpful for most users trying to navigate
> the Codex.
>
> The situation gets trickier, however, with the entries which are prefixed
> with Function_Reference/, Class_Reference/, etc. Look at the search results
> found, for example, for "http://codex.wordpress.org/?search=wp_remote_post".
> Not so pretty... And its kind of hard to programmatically determine, for
> example whether a search term should be prefixed with "Function Reference",
> "Function API", or whatever else.
>
> Overall, this means that the Codex is not as useful to developers as it
> could be. When I'm working, for example, I depend on DuckDuckGo's bang
> syntax search often to quickly look up manual pages for functions, and the
> experience looking up WordPress functions is definitely subpar as compared
> to other environments. When I'm searching for PHP functions, like "!php
> array_merge", the experience is a quick zero-click lookup. It would be nice
> to have that same experience in the WP Codex, like if searching "!wp
> register_post_type" would bring me directly to the relevant Codex page.
>
> What is the solution to this? Does it make more sense to create redirect
> pages for every function name indexed in the codex, ie creating a page
> called "register_post_type" with the content "#REDIRECT
> [[Function_Reference/register_
> post_type]]", or is there an extension that will make searching more
> user-friendly?
>
> I'd like to work on this, but I'm not sure what discussions and decisions
> have already happened. Can someone point me to a helpful way to contribute?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
>
> Nathaniel Taintor, Designer/Developer
> *Golden Apples Design*
> http://goldenapplesdesign.com
>
> @GoldenApples | 717.434.3226
> goldenapplesdesign at gmail.com
>
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