WordPress Post Indexer Plugin

Post Indexer is one of the most powerful plugins a Multisite or BuddyPress owner could ever hope to possess. It takes all the posts across your network and brings them into one spot behind the scenes. From there you can then display or manage those posts in a host of different ways with the help of other plugins.

Here’s an example of the Global Posts Widget in action. It pulls its data in from the index created by the Post Indexer.

Managing Posts from a Network

Multisite is a great tool, as you probably already know. But one of its biggest limitations is the lack of control you have in managing or displaying posts from all the different sites in the network.

At WPMU DEV, we’ve built an array of plugins that will help you do that. But before they can do what they’re designed to do, they need an index of all the different posts to pull from. This is where the Post Indexer comes in.

But the Post Indexer does more than just build an index, it allows you to control exactly how you want to build it.

Don’t want to include a particular site in the index? … No problem.
Need to get a particular site indexed right away?… No problem.
Want to see a rundown of which sites have the most posts in the index? … No problem.
Need to index Pages as well as Posts? … I think you guessed it — not an issue.

Features

Take a quick look at its features, and then we’ll check a few out in more detail below.

Designed to work seamlessly with heaps of other WPMU DEV plugins
Post Indexer dashboard and statistics for all sites
Individual site statistics
Index posts published prior to plugin activation (index rebuilding functionality)
Index rebuilding on a site by site basis
Choose post types to be indexed for all sites
Choose post types to be indexed on a site by site basis
Enable or disable indexing on a site by site basis
Global setting to determine lifetime of index

Check this out!

This plugin by itself does not provide any features to your users. However, it is required by other powerful plugins in order for them to work.

Adjusting the settings in the Post Indexer will also affect what data other plugins have access to, giving you more flexibility and control. For example, if you choose to disable a site from being indexed, then a plugin like the Recent Global Posts Widget will not show posts from that site.

We want to help you truly harness the power of this plugin, and so we came up with a whole heap of plugins that work together with Post Indexer to
allow you to do many things:

Anti-splog -Ultimate plugin and service to stop and kills splogs
Blogs Directory – fully search-able, avatar inclusive, automatic and rather good looking directory of all sites on your network
Global Site Search – provides global search across all sites on your network with ease
Global Site Tags – Displays global site tag for your entire network
Tag feed – display a list of posts that have been tagged with a specific tag/category
Recent Global Posts – display a list of recent posts anywhere on your site via a simple shortcode or template function
Recent Global Posts Widget – Display latest posts from across your entire network – using a simple but powerful widget!
Recent Global Comments Feed – RSS feed of latest comments from across your entire network
Recent Global Posts Feed – RSS feed of latest posts from across your entire network
Recent Global Author Comments Feed – Provides a global feed of comments from a single author made across multiple sites on the network
Recent Global Comments Widget – Display latest comments from across your entire network – using a simple but powerful widget!
Live Stream - Display your own slick animated Live Stream Widget.
User Reports - If you’ve been looking for a way to track user posts and comments across your network then look no further!

Post Indexer Backend

Take a quick look at some of the setting from the Post Indexer backend. Here’s a partial glance at the statistics page.

And here’s a look at the Most Indexed Sites graph up close.

Need to see the most indexed sites in a text layout? No problem.

If you’re a Multisite owner, then the Post Indexer is a must-have plugin for you. It does the building, and you do the controlling.

With the Post Indexer, You Get Great Functionality …

PLUS: ‘Guaranteed To Work’ Compatibility with the Latest Version of WordPress, Multisite and BuddyPress

We guarantee that all our plugins work with the latest version of WordPress, Multisite and, if appropriate, BuddyPress too … no more suffering with broken, poorly coded, free plugins… that’s the WPMU DEV money-back guarantee.

PLUS: Absolutely NO license restrictions

Whether you choose to purchase one plugin or all our plugins and themes, you can use your purchase on as many sites as you like, for as long as you like, no ongoing membership or subscription required, everything at WPMU DEV is 100% GPL.

PLUS: No subscription or ongoing membership required

Simply join and then cancel your membership, and you can carry on using our plugins and themes for as long as you like, wherever you like. Or, become an ongoing member for more support, updates, new plugins and APIs for videos, our dashboard and more. It’s up to you!

PLUS: Unlimited Live & Q&A Support from the WordPress experts, for anything to do with WordPress at all!

All WPMU plugins and themes come with simple usage instructions, and unlimited member access to support Q&A where our dedicated team of WordPress support and development experts are waiting to answer your questions 24 hours a day – no appointment required!

PLUS: Fully internationalized, fully white-label ready, fully customizable

It’s easy to translate any WPMU DEV plugin or theme, and it’s equally easy to white-label them so your clients or users never know your secret source. As 100% GPL code, you’re even free to edit our plugins and themes as much as you like, no questions asked.

PLUS: More Amazing Premium WordPress Plugins

Buy Post Indexer now and we’ll show you how to upgrade to premium membership and gain access to EVERYTHING we offer: more than 300 plugins and themes, all with the same the updates and support we’ve just promised you.

Join more than 100,000 satisfied customers who trust WPMU DEV as their #1 WordPress resource – it’s like having your own dedicated WordPress team.

For help with installing plugins please refer to our Plugin installation guide.

To Use:

This plugin by itself does not provide any features to your users. It’s simply a backend plugin that can be used to build other features.

An example plugin demonstrating how the Post Indexer can be used is found here.

1. Install the Post Indexer

2. Visit Plugins in your Network Admin dashboard and Network Activate the Post Indexer plugin there.

The Dashboard

From your Network Admin section, you can access the Post Indexer dashboard by going to Settings > Post Indexer. You should then land on a dashboard with three tabs at the top that look like this:

When you first install the plugin, under the first tab labeled Statistics, you will probably not see anything. By default, the Post Indexer will only index posts created after installation.

However, if you would like to index previously published posts, you can do so by going to the third tab — Rebuild Index.

As the instructions in the Rebuild Index section warn, “This may take a considerable amount of time and could impact the performance of your server.”

If you would like to index only selected sites, or if you would like to prevent certain sites from being indexed, then see the next section.

Selecting Individual Sites to Index

If you like, you can choose to manually index only certain sites, and you can also choose to prevent individual sites from being indexed at all.

You can do this from the Network Admin area by going to Sites > All Sites. You should see a new column added here titled Indexing.

From here you have a choice to:

Disable/Enable indexing
Edit the settings
Rebuild the index for that site only
See statistics for that site only

Just click on the option you’d like for that individual site/blog.

Choosing Post Types and Index Lifetime

Finally, in the Global Settings tab, you can choose which post types you’d like to index (Posts, Pages, etc.), as well as how long you would like the index to go back.

Checking to Make Sure It Works

Once you either add more posts or rebuild the index, you should start to see statistics about which sites have been indexed.

Keeping in mind that this plugin is only used in conjunction with others, you might also check out a plugin like the Recent Global Posts Widget. If everything is working as it should, the Recent Global Posts Widget should populate with recent posts from your index.

(Keep in mind that these other plugins draw from the index that the Post Indexer creates. And so if you have disabled indexing for a site, the posts from that site will not be included when a plugin like the Recent Global Posts Widget goes looking for it.)

Troubleshooting Potential Problems

If you run into problems, you may want to check for the following:

First, make sure the post is published on a site with privacy set to “Allow search engines to index this site.” (Found in the regular admin area — not the Network Admin area — under Settings > Reading.)

Next, there are a few config options at the top of post-indexer.php. Unless you’re in a very solid dedicated environment, we recommend leaving them as is.

Check to Make Sure The Tables Installed Correctly:

And as always, if you have trouble, come talk to us in the Support Community. We’re here 24/7/365!