Today we are extremely excited to announce a new Major release of Geek ElasticSearch component.
This version supports a new important feature that enables users to filter search results by more new multiple search filters, next to such basic filters by content type, by categories, by access and by languages that are supported in the previous versions.
In this newest version, you now can filter search results by author, by manufacturer of shopping cart extensions, by custom fields of Joomla, VirtueMart, DJ ClassiFieds, eShopping, AdsManager, JReviews, .. This will help users can quickly find an expected items from thousands or millions of records with just some simple clicks. And we call this new feature Facet Filters.
With this new feature, we are proud to affirm that Geek ElasticSearch is the most complete search solution for Joomla websites. It works fastest, supports full settings of search filters and search results. Beside it can be expanded to search data from 3rd party components and works well with websites that have huge amounts of data.
We have updated a demo page to make it easier for users to imagine how this new feature works, you can click on the link below to checkout this new demo.
If you are excited with the new features and demo, you can follow the steps below to enable these features for your website.
Some important notes before upgrading
Upgrade ElasticSearch
There is an issue of Elasticsearch 2.3 that make it do not return correct facets for search filters. So if you are using ElasticSearch 2.3 and want to enable a Facet Filters feature for your site, you are recommended to upgrade ElasticSearch to newer versions 5.x, 6.x or 7.x (current stable version)
Re-Index Data
In the new version, we had to change a mapping of ElasticSearch index to develop new features. So you will have to Clear an ElasticSearch Index after upgrading to new version and re-index all data to get new features work properly.
Configure Search Module
Enable Search Filters
On the Search Module' settings panel, you will see a new Tab name Search Filters where you can select a filters that will be enabled on Search Form, and set how many facets will be displayed for each Filters.
If the number of facets is larger than the number of displaying ones, you will see the Show More link below the list of facets, users can click on this link to load the next set of facets.
Dynamic Counter
The number next to facets display a number of documents that match with this facet, this means that if you click on one facet, the number of documents returned to search results is equal to this number.
The list of facets of all filters, and their counters will be updated automatically whenever you change any search criterias, so we call this feature Dynamic Counter.
The facets list is sorted by counter number, and the filters has no facet will be hidden from the filter bar.
Translate Field Label
Another new tab name Translation is a place where you can translate / change label of Search Filters. You can copy a text on a right section and paste it into text area to translate.
Auto Populate Search Results
Under the tab Search Results & Ordering, we added a new setting that enables module to automatically display the search results for an empty search phrase on initial page load.
Since the filters bar will be displayed on the left side of search page, this feature helps fill the right area with search results on initial page load.
If you love our Geek ElasticSearch component, please help us to spread it to the world. by sharing this blog post on your social networks and writing a review on Joomla Extensions Directory.
And if you have any suggestions to improve extension or find any issue, please create a thread on forum, we are always ready to support.