Coming soon will be a brand new plugin for Simple:Press. This plugin takes a fresh look at searching and how it gathers results and displays them to the person performing the search. Currently, our core search function searches in posts and titles (various combinations) for the search terms and criteria (any, word, phrase, etc) and then display a list of topics that met the search criteria. Unfortunately, when you are perusing the search results, you don't really have know if the search term match is relevant to your search or not. Additionally, it can be frustrating to have to go through the topics to find the actual post that contained the search term.

Not anymore! With our new upcoming Search Plugin, you can now display the exact posts (or topics for titles) that matched your search criteria. The plugin will also give you an excerpt of the post content with any search terms highlighted. Of course, the length of the excerpt is completely customizable in the template tag.

The new Search plugin is also capable of searching post content or both post content and topic titles (but not just topic titles - no content to show). All other search options are fully supported. If the search term is found in a topic title, it will also be highlighted in the title. If multiple search terms are found in the post content, you may (depending on excerpt size) see multiple excerpts displaying with search terms highlighted.

The format of search results (as you can see from the images) is quite different than the current core searching. You get the post excerpts plus you get who posted it and a bit of info on the topic/post such as post count in topic and topic views as well as links to the forum, topic and post.

Another feature of the new upcoming Search plugin is the ability to search your WP blog posts too. Yes, the functionality of the existing Blog Search plugin has been incorporated into the plugin itself. So with a single plugin (the Search plugin will check if both are active and prevent the Blog Search from operating), you can now search you WP and SP posts. We have additionally enhanced the search results to show number of matches in the forum and the blog in the actual tab switching button.

So when can you get your hands on the new plugin? In just a matter of weeks. The new Search plugin will release very shortly after WP 4.0 and SP 5.5.1 release. Both of those are due in mid to late August - WP is slated to release Beta 1 of 4.0 tonight in fact. But, you can see the Search plugin in action now on or support site and take it for a spin.