Unbelievable – it took more than one year from version 0.1 to the 1.0, which we released yesterday. But I have dedicated the last 24 hours to proceed coding on the Advanced Search, and so much has been changed that a jump to 2.0 seems justified – even if only a single day has passed since the last major release.

What exactly has been changed? Well, I was working on the upgrade of Advanced Search Lite which was actually a quick’n'dirty ripoff from Advanced Search. I started again to rip the code from the new AS to make the new AS Lite, when I realised I could as well merge them and have two plugins in one. For me this would mean less duplicate code to care after, for the user it means that they have more choice along with a slimer code base.

And so I merged Advanced Search and Advanced Search into one plugin download. They appear in the Plugin panel as two separate plugins. One can use either one or the other or even both at the same time. Also, there were even more features added: Blog visitors can now switch between searching strings or words(!), WP’s internal search can be transparently replaced with the FULLTEXT (i.e. word) search, and Advanced Search Lite can now also be used as a widget.

What do you think, is a 2.0 ok for this? I definitely think so, and I even dare to say that this is the bestest search plugin for WordPress evar, which everybody should have on their blogs. You heard me!

So, what are you waiting for? Visit the Advanced Search page, download it and enjoy searching 2.0 (no beta!).

Good news everybody! I’m happy to announce Advanced Search version 1.0! Not only is this version finally compatible with WordPress 2.3.x, but it also has been profoundly revised and cleaned up, a good number of bugs have been fixed, and it has a couple of shiny new features.

The most interesting feature is that you can now use the search form in a truly modular fashion without digging in the code: In the new config file settings.php, you can turn each section on or off. For example, if you have many categories and you don’t want people bothering with switching categories (not to talk of long loading times), you can simply turn this section off.

So, grab the new version and install it. And: don’t forget to spread the word! (Many people have requested a new version, not all are subscribed to this blog.)

Unfortunately, there are bad news, too: As a side effect of the cleanup, the plugin doesn’t work with the legacy series 2.0.x of WordPress anymore (on which this site runs, too). But version 0.6 should still do the job for us, and it will stay available for download.

By the way, the new version of Advanced Search Lite is in the making.

Update: Within a mere day, there was a version jump to 2.0!