Search in HeroThemes products is powered by the WordPress search. The WordPress search functionality is straightforward, matching title and content of posts (including pages and articles).

This is performed against the database using the like operator, which offers simplicity in implementation and resources, but limited flexibility and effectiveness.

WordPress does have a concept of relevance, and this is how content is matched:

• Full sentence matches in post titles.
• All search terms in post titles.
• Any search terms in post titles.
• Full sentence matches in post content.

The biggest drawback of the inbuilt search is the expectation of the user. Search engines have set a new bar for user search experience, they are fast, contextual and intuitive.

Limitations of the WordPress search functionality

WordPress is great for simple search and with keyword searching, it works great for most circumstances. It doesn’t work well with Natural Language  and Interrogation type searches.

The search is case insensitive, will strip certain words but not any punctuation (see later section).

WordPress does not include any settings to control how the search works, which helps ensure consistency of results, so other techniques must be considered for effective search.

Here are some of the things the in-built search does not do:

Search with alternative spellings or mis-spellings

The search term “cancelation” will not match an article titled “Flight Cancellation Information”, even though these are acceptable alternative spellings.

The workaround is to ensure the content contains alternative spellings or for simple words a spelling is used that also is contained in the shorter search term, eg an article titled “buttons” will match both “buttons” and “button” as a search term.

Contextual search

If someone searches for “Installing on Website” both those words need to be in the article and it will not match an article titled “Install on Website”.

WordPress has no notion that the user wants the Website Installation Guide and does not process the search query in the same way a search engine would.

Two things to note:-

• “install on website” as a search term would match an article titled “installing on website”, for the reasons discussed above.
• “on” is a stop word and would be ignored by WordPress for search, see below.

Punctuation

An article titled “How to install on website” would match a search for “install on website” but not “install on website?”. Punctuation is not ignored by WordPress.

Additional mechanisms for stripping punctuation, including full stops, apostrophes and question marks may be required.

Shortcodes, Attachments and other content

Because WordPress only searches post titles and content as it’s stored in the database it does not search any deeper than this – rendered content such as shortcodes, article attachments and linked documentation is not returned in search results.

This is also true of all post meta, including comments.

Taxonomies (Categories and Tags)

WordPress does not search taxonomies such as the inbuilt categories and tags.

As an exception to this, HeroTheme’s KnowAll theme and standalone Heroic Knowledge Base plugin include a search extension that will return articles tagged with the search term or are in an article category matching the search term. This works on literal words and phrases.

For most articles, the most straight forward way to ensure these are returned for a particular search term is to add the term as a tag to the article. Article tags are useful for organizing content.

Weighting

WordPress does not apply any weighting other than the relevance criteria discussed at the top of this article.

Posts with titles that have exact search term(s) matches will be prioritized over posts that include the terms in the content.

Stopwords

These are words that are stripped out and removed by WordPress search, so are ignored. For example, an article titled “search in WordPress” would match a search for “search with WordPress”.

WordPress includes a couple of standard stopwords such as on, in, was etc. and can be altered with the wp_search_stopwords filter.

The default stopwords depend on the language of the site, here are the ones for English for WordPress 5.2:-

about, an, are, as, at, be, by, com, for, from, how, in, is, it, of, on, or, that, the, this, to, was, what, when, where, who, will, with, www

Customizations

If you want to go beyond the inbuilt WordPress search functionality, it’s possible to do this with customizations.

SearchWP is the recommended plugin for advanced search control and augmentation. This plugin seeks to overcome all the limitations listed above.

SearchWP includes options for:

• Partial (Fuzzy) matching
• Search word replacement
• Did you mean? corrections

The post Search in WordPress first appeared on HeroThemes.

These steps can be useful when transferring content from one installation to another or migrating a site.

Exporting Content

Content can be exported from the WordPress dashboard in Tools > Export.

Select the content you wish to export, for example to export just the knowledge base articles select Articles.

Click Download Export File to generate an .xml of the selected content, which can be saved to your computer.

Importing Content

Content such as the WordPress .xml export files can be imported from the WordPress dashboard in Tools > Import, select the WordPress importer to import WordPress .xml files.

On the next screen you will then be able to select the file you want to import. Click Upload File and Import to run the import process.

Third Party Tools

A number of third party WordPress migration plugins are available for more advanced export and import operations. For example, to import articles from CSV or spreadsheet (excel and office) formats.

The following 3rd party plugins may be useful for importing from various file formats (certain functionality may require purchase of a premium version):-

• WP All Import
• Import Content in WordPress & WooCommerce with Excel

If your content is already in WordPress in post or page format, it’s possible to import it into the knowledge base or FAQs as described here.

The post Exporting and Importing Content first appeared on HeroThemes.

Activate your Theme or Plugin License

To activate or check the license status of a theme (eg. KnowAll), from your WordPress dashboard select the Appearance > Theme License option. From there enter the theme license key contained in your purchase email from HeroThemes. Your theme license key can also be found in the Licenses section of Your HeroThemes Account.

To activate or check the license status of the standalone plugin from your WordPress dashboard select the Knowledge Base > Settings and then click the License and Updates tab. From there enter the plugin license key contained in your purchase email. Your plugin license key can also be found in the Licenses section of Your HeroThemes Account. You do not need to activate the plugin when packaged with the KnowAll theme as the theme manages the updates.

Auto Update a Theme or Plugin

With the theme license activated you can check if a theme update is available from the Appearance > Themes list. A banner will display New version available on the theme’s tile if an update is available. Click the update now link to update the theme. The theme will be updated automatically.

If the theme comes packaged with plugins that also need updating, check this from the Appearance > Update Plugins menu. If this menu is not available, the plugins have been updated automatically or no update is required.

With the plugin license activated you can check if a plugin update is available from the Plugins > Installed Plugins list. A message will be displayed next to the HeroThemes plugin if an update is available. You can view the changelog or click update now to automatically update the plugin.

Manually Update a Theme or Plugin

If you’re unable to use the automated mechanism, it’s possible to update your theme or plugin using the method below.

Log in to Your HeroThemes Account and select the Downloads tab. Select the relevant theme or plugin download file.

Next, make sure you have an appropriate backup of your site. If done correctly, no settings or content will change, but it’s important to backup in the case things go wrong.

Upload the updated theme or plugin .zip file according to the documentation. You may see the following warning you that you are about to replace an already installed, click Replace current with uploaded to continue and follow the rest of the (re)installation steps when prompted to update any packaged plugins.

Troubleshooting

If you have any issues with automatic update, first try logging out and then back into your WordPress installation. Check your theme or plugin license is active with the steps described above. Finally, submit a support ticket if you continue to experience any issues

The post Updating your Theme or Plugin first appeared on HeroThemes.

If you wish to change this, you can re-enable the blog and front/posts pages by following the directions below.

Re-enabling posts and static pages in KnowAll

To enable posts and static pages for KnowAll, select the Enable Blog and Static Page Support option from WP Admin > Appearance > Customize > Homepage Settings > KnowAll Blog Support and then click the Publish button.

Creating a Blog Archive

With the steps above complete, you can create your blog archive with the following steps:-

1. Ensure you have some posts to display, these can now be created from the new Posts > Add New menu.
2. Create a dummy page from Pages > Add New. Name it ‘Blog’ or whatever you wish the blog archive to be titled. You do not need to anything other than name and publish the page.
3. Assign this Blog page as the posts archive from Settings > Reading > Posts Page. Set as your newly created Blog page. (see screenshot below).
4. Assign the Homepage as Knowledge Base Archive to ensure that the front page of your KnowAll site remains the knowledge base.
5. You’ll need to add the Blog page to a navigation menu or otherwise make it reachable. This can be done from Appearance > Menus.
6. Your Blog page should now function as a simple posts archive.

The post Adding a blog to the KnowAll theme first appeared on HeroThemes.

Knowledge Base > Account > How do I reset my password?
Knowledge Base > App > Account > How do I reset my password?
Knowledge Base > Site Queries > How do I reset my password?

A breadcrumb will appear for each category the article is assigned. This is expected behaviour, because WordPress does not keep a record of the path the visitor took to reach the article, or the article may have been reached directly.

If you wish to alter the standard behaviour to display something different you will need to take one of the following approaches:

Turn off breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs can be turned off completely from Knowledge Base > Settings > General > Display breadcrumbs in knowledge base. This is the simplest way to remove the breadcrumbs from display.

Create duplicate articles and assign to just one category

Using a plugin such as Duplicate Post, you can create a clone of an article each category. Assign each clone it’s own, single category.

The downside of this approach is each of these articles will have it’s own comments voting and meta and you will need to update each article if you want to make a change to the content.

Hide all other category breadcrumbs

Using CSS below you can hide all but the first breadcrumb.

/* Initially hide all breadcrumbs */
.hkb-breadcrumbs {
  display: none;
}
/* Re-show first child breadcrumb */
.hkb-breadcrumbs:nth-child(1) {
  display: initial;
}

This can be copied into custom CSS settings. Where the code snippet is placed may depend on the product you are using:-

1. KnowAll

For KnowAll, open the theme customizer from:

Appearance > Customize > Theme > Custom CSS

or;

2. Standalone Heroic Knowledge Plugin

Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS

The post Working with multiple category breadcrumbs first appeared on HeroThemes.

It is recommended that you backup your site before proceeding with any upgrade, articles and settings will be preserved, but a full backup ensures you can revert any changes should there be any issues.
1. Download the latest version of the plugin from your account page at HeroThemes.com. The latest version of each purchase will be listed in the Downloads section. Note you will need a valid account and license to access your download.

2. Login to your site’s WordPress administration panel and deactivate the old version of Heroic Knowledge Base from Plugins > Installed plugins. With the Knowledge Base deactivated, you can delete the plugin by selecting Delete and then Yes, Delete these files from the confirmation screen.

3. With the old version removed, it is time to upload the new plugin. From your WordPress administration dashboard select Plugins > Add New. Select Upload Plugin at the top of the page. Select the new plugin zip file downloaded in step 1 (eg. ht-knowledge-base-v2.3.4.0.zip) and select upload. When the plugin installs, click Activate Plugin, the new version will be activated.

4. The Welcome Screen will be displayed. The new version is now ready to use. Be sure to consult the knowledge base documentation for details of any new features and other changes.

The post Manually updating the Heroic Knowledge Base plugin first appeared on HeroThemes.

The ToC detects the heading tags in an article such as H2 and automatically generates an index of links to the various section heading tags. This is then displayed in a widget at the side of the article.

To add a Table of Contents widget, simply goto Appearance > Widgets from your WordPress dashboard and drag the Knowledge Base Table of Contents widget to the sidebar area you want the widget to appear in.

The post Adding a Table of Contents to the Knowledge Base first appeared on HeroThemes.

You can also use a Knowledge Base widget to display links to popular and recent Knowledge Base content.

However, if you want to link to a specific article from a post or another article, simply follow these steps.

1. Go to the post, page or article you want to insert the link to a knowledge base article.
2. Select Edit from the menu, you may need to login to see this option. Alternatively, log into the wordpress dashboard and go to the edit screen of the post or page.
3. From the editor, highlight the text that you want to make into a link and click the link (paperclip) button.
4. Select ‘Or link to existing content’ and begin typing the title of the article you want to link to.
5. Select the article you want from the results and click the Insert link button.

It’s that easy. To remove the link, simple click the broken paperclip.

The post How to link to a Knowledge Base Article first appeared on HeroThemes.