Hi all,<br><br>The existing search functionality on <a href="http://wordpress.org" target="_blank">wordpress.org</a>
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.<br>
<br>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 "<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/?search=posts" target="_blank">http://codex.wordpress.org/?search=posts</a>" vs "<a href="http://wordpress.org/search/posts" target="_blank">http://wordpress.org/search/posts</a>".
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. <br>
<br>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 "<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/?search=wp_remote_post" target="_blank">http://codex.wordpress.org/?search=wp_remote_post</a>".
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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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_<div id=":1jg">post_type]]", or is there an extension that will make searching more user-friendly?<br>
<br>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?<br><br>Thanks in advance,<br><br><br clear="all">Nathaniel Taintor, Designer/Developer<br>
<b>Golden Apples Design</b><br><a href="http://goldenapplesdesign.com" target="_blank">http://goldenapplesdesign.com</a><br><br>@GoldenApples | <a href="tel:717.434.3226" value="+17174343226" target="_blank">717.434.3226</a><br>
<a href="mailto:goldenapplesdesign@gmail.com" target="_blank">goldenapplesdesign@gmail.com</a></div>