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WooCommerce ElasticSearch plugin replaces default WordPress search with ElasticSearch and WooCommerce Layered Nav and Layered Nav Filters widgets with appropriate widgets. The plugin reduces the load on your MySQL server by avoiding facets calculation and search on database.

The plugin provides flexible settings panel, which allows you to override facet names and filter keys which will be used in the URL.

Need ElasticSearch server?

If you use shared hosting and can install ElasticSearch server or you don’t know how to do it, then you can use SaaS solutions which provides ElasticSearch hosting. There are a number of such services and even some of them provide FREE plan so you don’t have to pay for anything to start using it. Here are some of them:

• http://qbox.io/


• https://www.found.no/


• http://ift.tt/L9b4Yz – has free plan


• etc

Installation

To accomplish installation process you just need to go through following steps:

1. Go to Plugins » Add New page;


2. Click on Upload tab;


3. Select the plugin archive in the file input field and click Install Now button;


4. After the plugin will be installed, activate it;


5. Once activated, installation is finished.

Pay attention that the plugin will work only if you have WooCommerce installed and activated.

Index Configuration

After successful installation and activation, you need to configure your plugin. You need to go to WooCommerce settings page and open ElasticSearch tab. Enter your ElasticSearch server address and index name. Pay attention that index shouldn’t be created on your server yet.

Once you enter your server address and index name, you need to go to WooCommerce » ElasticSearch page. If everything has been entered properly, then you should see a message which tells you that server is enabled, but index is not created yet. So you need to click on Create Index button to create it. When you create your index, you will see two new buttons: Index Products and Drop All Products. Click on index products button and wait while all products will be indexed.

Usage

Once you’ve created your index and indexed all products, you will be able to start using ElasticSearch Layered Nav and ElasticSearch Layered Nav Filters widgets. These widgets override standard WooCommerce Layered Nav and WooCommerce Layered Nav Filters widgets. Add these widgets to a sidebar which will be shown on your product categories pages.

The first widget (layered nav) shows a set of facets, available for a certain category or your shop in general. This widgets shows facets based product attributes, categories, tags and prices. If you don’t want to show some facet, then you can go to plugin settings and uncheck it in the list of available filters. In the same place you can override facets title and filter key which will be used in an URL.

The second widget (layered nav filters) shows a set of selected facets to filter products by. You can override its title by editing widget settings.