[yjmhugues]

2 years, 4 months ago #28648

Building a web directory that works also with app.

Need expert advice on search tool to use, the best comprosmise for good quick search results and economically. Help define all technical aspects etc..

Will need help to install,configure, and tweak search engine to optimize search results.
Looking forward to hear from you.

Best Regards

• This topic was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by wpsolr.

[wpsolr]

2 years, 4 months ago #28650

Which directory plugin/theme is it about?

[yjmhugues]

2 years, 4 months ago #28655

Hi,

The theme is wilcity. Here is the demo https://wilcity.com/

[wpsolr]

2 years, 4 months ago #28656

How many listings do you forecast?

[yjmhugues]

2 years, 4 months ago #28663

I believe in a year could arrive to around five thousand entries. Then next year maybe reach ten to fifteen thousand. Each business can add their own listing, then also will do scrapping with bulk import csv files into database with a wordpress plugin.

Going to try to cover average of 5 cities per twenty countries, with four main buisness categories, which can divid up to another ten business sub-categories. Then think would have up to ten entries per buisnesses sub-category. Would like to have around 10 facet search type to filter criteria such as services and products offered. Also in futur will add multistores so will need search to incluse products sold as well.

I am not sure what is best option to hierachize the structure of buisnesses and categories (looking to create directory listing for a business sector in which can me classified in 4 main groups which include several type specialized business (with special categories, offering services or equipment) throughout 20+ countries. Should I do a wordpress multisite to seperate the four main buisness categories?

I am an engineer, and have some experience making websites with wordpress and doing small modifications. I have a global understanding of what is going on in front-end and backend but not full in depth, I am not a programmer. I did learn some js, php, html, css, ruby, mysql, but do not have time to be fully dedicated to it.

I am just starting so budget is also a concern.

So what is your input?

Best Reagrds,
Yves

[yjmhugues]

2 years, 4 months ago #28664

My bad repeated myself a little in paragraph 3 🙂

[wpsolr]

2 years, 4 months ago #28665

For a new project like this, the cost of building a scalable search could be overwhelming. Perhaps you can start with the theme’s default search, and seek for a better solution as soon as it has grown enough?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by wpsolr.

[yjmhugues]

2 years, 4 months ago #28674

How much do you think would cost to setup search for 5000 business entries, monthly running cost for:
– Algolia,
– elastic search,
– Apache solr?

Apache Solr and Elasticsearch are open source, correct? If so cost would be to install, monthly hosting fee, plus some ponctual maintenance, no?

[wpsolr]

2 years, 4 months ago #28675

– You can indeed install Elasticsearch, OpenSearch and Apache Solr on your own server, for instance as docker containers
This is free.
You can also find a hosting company (Elastic, AWS, SearchStax, OpenSolr, Bonsai, Aiven …): pricing is then based on VM resources. Basically, it would cost 20$ to 50$ per month.

– Algolia pricing is based on your monthly content and queries
Be aware that each sort with Algolia creates a replicated index, and each indexing cost a query, therefore additional costs.
Your 5000 listings could fit in the Algolia’s free tier (10,000 items and 10,000 queries a month as of today) , but you have to consider other costs: indexing (or reindexing) cost 5,000 queries (every indexed item costs a query), and each sort creates a replicated index and costs 5,000 items (and probably 5,000 search).
Also, each time a Bot is crawling your search pages, it will cost you extra queries on your bill.

– Your theme is providing its own custom search
This is great, but does not fit with WPSOLR’s native integrations. WPSOLR can only power the standard archive search (with the url /?s=), and all other archives (taxonomies, custom fields, date, author …). The WPSOLR’s filters widget can then be inserted in the archive sidebar.
For custom search pages, WPSOLR provides some add-ons (for instance for WooCommerce product search or bbPress forums search), or theme extensions (for instance MyListing, Listify, Jobify).
Powering your theme would require the development of a new theme extension for Wilcity. This is why I mention high costs in my previous reply.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by wpsolr.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by wpsolr.

[yjmhugues]

2 years, 4 months ago #28717

If I wanted to have your company our someone you recommend develop a theme extension for wilcity how much would you think it would roughly cost and how long would it take?

[wpsolr]

2 years, 4 months ago #28723

Based on previous work, it really depends on the theme.
MyListing is much more flexible (you can construct your own listing types and field types) than Jobify for instance: it took 20 days of work, including the Selenium tests.