Init Live Search

Deliver an ultra-responsive search experience to your visitors — no page reloads, no jQuery, no lag. Init Live Search is a modern, lightweight, and fully accessible live search solution for WordPress — now with native Block Editor (Gutenberg) blocks and Abilities API support (WordPress 6.9+), an optional MySQL FULLTEXT search index, optional Meilisearch integration, tag-aware matching, SEO metadata support, ACF integration, WooCommerce product filters, and customizable UI presets.

It replaces the default <input name="s"> with a clean, intuitive search modal powered entirely by the WordPress REST API. Everything loads in real-time — with zero disruption to browsing flow.

Perfect for content-heavy blogs, WooCommerce stores, or even headless sites. Every interaction is fast, fluid, and designed to work across devices.

Want typo-tolerant, sub-50ms relevance ranking on top of that? Connect your own self-hosted or cloud Meilisearch instance in a few clicks — Init Live Search will automatically prefer it for search, and just as automatically fall back to the built-in database search if it’s ever unreachable. Your visitors never see a broken search box.

Prefer working entirely in the Block Editor? Three dynamic blocks — Live Search Box, Related Posts, and AI Related Posts — live under their own Init Live Search category in the block inserter, each with a live server-side preview as you configure it, and each sharing the exact same rendering code as its shortcode counterpart. For AI agents and automated tools, two read-only abilities (search and related posts) are also exposed through the standard WordPress Abilities API on WordPress 6.9+.

It also brings AI-powered related posts and an advanced keyword generator — giving your visitors smarter ways to discover content.

This plugin is part of the Init Plugin Suite — a collection of minimalist, fast, and developer-focused tools for WordPress.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/brokensmile2103/init-live-search

What’s New in Version 2.0.0

• Abilities API support (WordPress 6.9+): search and related-posts exposed as two read-only, discoverable abilities (init-live-search/search-posts, init-live-search/get-related-posts) — optional and fully backward-compatible on older WordPress versions
• Block Editor (Gutenberg) support: three new blocks — Live Search Box, Related Posts, AI Related Posts — under their own block category, each with a live editor preview and sharing the same rendering code as their shortcode counterparts
• Requires at least raised from 5.9 to 6.9 to support the Abilities API. Requires PHP remains 7.4

What’s New in Version 1.8.x & 1.9.x

• Optional FULLTEXT Search Index (1.9.5): opt-in MySQL FULLTEXT-indexed table for Title/Excerpt/Content, replacing slow LIKE '%term%' scans on large sites. Off by default, auto-builds in the background via WP-Cron once enabled (no SSH/WP-CLI needed), with wp init-live-search fulltext-reindex available for a manual/faster build. See “FULLTEXT Search Index” below for details.

• Optional Meilisearch Integration: connect your own Meilisearch server (self-hosted or cloud) as the primary search engine

  • Typo-tolerant, relevance-ranked, sub-50ms search results straight from Meilisearch
  • Automatic, transparent fallback to the local database search whenever Meilisearch is disabled, unreachable, or misconfigured — search availability is never compromised
  • New Meilisearch settings tab: Host URL, Index Name, Search Key, Admin/Indexing Key, request timeout, one-click “Test Connection”, and (1.9.5) a one-click “Reindex Now” button for sites without WP-CLI/SSH access
  • Posts are synced automatically on publish/update/trash/delete (non-blocking — won’t slow down the editor)
  • WP-CLI command wp init-live-search meili-reindex for bulk-indexing or rebuilding the entire index
  • Sensitive indexing key can be defined via the INIT_LIVE_SEARCH_MEILI_ADMIN_KEY constant in wp-config.php instead of the database, for extra security

  AI-Powered Related Posts: brand new [init_live_search_related_ai] shortcode

  • Uses multi-signal scoring (tags, series, title bigrams, same_keyword via ACF, category, views, comments, freshness)
  • Shares templates with [init_live_search_related_posts] (no extra styling needed)
  • Fully filterable via new developer hooks: ai_candidates, ai_signals, ai_weights, ai_score

  Advanced Keyword Generator: upgraded algorithm for admin keyword suggestions

  • Replaced TF-IDF with BM25 term weighting
  • Added NPMI (fixed probability base) and Log-Likelihood Ratio (Dunning) for collocation strength
  • Generates bigrams and trigrams for richer, more specific keyword suggestions
  • Cross-document frequency penalty down-ranks phrases that are too generic across the site
  • MMR (Maximal Marginal Relevance) selection ensures diverse, non-redundant final keywords
  • Title-only source: clean signal, no excerpt noise, works reliably across all site types
  • Unicode-safe, locale-aware stop words (Vietnamese & English), and soft fallback mode

  Read the full description on the official page →