Changelog

Release Date - 12 July 2026

• Enhancements:

  • Search term highlighting now keeps double-quoted phrases intact: searching for "richard harding" highlights the whole phrase instead of its individual words. Mixed queries (e.g. "richard harding" smith) highlight the phrase plus the remaining words, and phrases match across whitespace variations, including non-breaking spaces.
  • Terms excluded with the - operator are no longer highlighted, since they cannot appear in the results.
  • Added client-side JavaScript highlighting for cached pages. When a full-page cache (e.g. LiteSpeed Cache, WP Super Cache) serves a cached response, PHP-based highlighting is skipped. The new script reads document.referrer in the browser and applies the same highlighting logic client-side, covering singular post/page views where "Highlight followed links" is enabled.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed "Highlight followed links" silently not working when the site's Home URL scheme differs from the scheme visitors use (e.g. an http:// Home URL on a site served over https://, common behind SSL-terminating proxies).

Full Changelog: v4.3.1...v4.3.2

Changelog

Release Date - 8 July 2026

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed phrase search: double-quoted terms (e.g. "WordPress" or "WordPress plugin") now always perform a phrase search by automatically enabling boolean mode when quoted terms are detected.
  • Fixed LIKE search stripping hyphens from compound terms (e.g. b-26 was incorrectly searched as b26). Internal hyphens are now preserved; only leading/trailing hyphens used as boolean operators are stripped.
  • [Pro] Fixed: short search terms (below the FULLTEXT minimum character threshold) now target the custom table columns (ct.title, ct.content, ct.excerpt) instead of wp_posts when custom tables are enabled. Previously the LIKE fallback always searched against wp_posts even with a fully indexed custom table.
  • Fixed SQL syntax error when search query contains only negative terms.
  • Fixed exclusion prefix handling and SQL precedence for negative search terms.

• Enhancements:

  • [Pro] Removed a redundant excerpt LIKE clause from search queries when the excerpt is already covered by the FULLTEXT MATCH clause, reducing unnecessary query overhead.
  • [Pro] The excerpt column is now only pulled into the FULLTEXT MATCH clause (native or custom tables) when the excerpt weight is greater than zero or "Search Excerpt" is explicitly enabled, instead of unconditionally.

Full Changelog: v4.3.0...v4.3.1

Changelog

Release Date - 3 May 2026

Read more in the Better Search Pro 4.3.0 release post.

• Enhancements:

  • Refactored Media Handler with a strategy-based thumbnail resolution chain; now also supports ACF Image fields (Image Array, Image ID, Image URL) and plain text URL fields.
  • Hardened search sanitization and boolean mode validation for more consistent results.
  • Escaped output in settings forms for improved security.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed spinner alignment inside action buttons (now displays inline rather than floating).
  • Fixed duplicate search query being executed on every non-seamless search page load.
  • Fixed relevance percentages on paginated search results by stabilizing topscore handling across pages, while reducing unnecessary topscore queries when minimum relevance filtering is not in use.
  • Fixed placeholder attribute escaping in text field rendering.

For previous changelog entries, please refer to the separate changelog.txt file or Github Releases page

Changelog

• Features:

  • Better Search form: The "any" post type option label can now be customised when the post type dropdown is enabled.

• Fixed:

  • Fixed an issue where selecting "any" post type would search through all post types instead of respecting the configured post types from settings.
  • [Pro] Custom table searches now include post slug matching when “Search post slug” is enabled.
  • [Pro] Fixed SQL syntax error in multisite search queries when custom tables are disabled, caused by malformed GROUP BY clause stripping.
  • Fixed improper stripping of boolean mode operators in LIKE clauses, ensuring consistent behavior between FULLTEXT and LIKE searches.

What's Changed

• Develop by @ajaydsouza in #137

Full Changelog: 4.2.3...4.2.4

Changelog

• Modifications:

  • Added WooCommerce product indexing and custom meta field support.
  • Modernized Tom Select implementation for taxonomy and meta key searches.
  • Enhanced seamless mode logic and form generation.
  • Improved tracker response handling with better regex patterns.
  • Standardized Hook_Registry validation across WebberZone plugins.

• Fixed:

  • Some users would see no search results when seamless mode is off.

What's Changed

• Merge develop v4.2.3 into Master by @ajaydsouza in #136

Full Changelog: 4.2.2...4.2.3

Full Changelog: 4.2.2...4.2.3-beta1

Changelog

• Modifications:

  • Updated Freemius SDK to v2.13.0.
  • Upgraded Settings API.
  • Improved text highlighting.
  • The Settings screen's "Create Fuzzy Search Indexes" button now deletes and recreates the Fuzzy Search functions.
  • The Cache key is now created by eliminating unnecessary variations to improve cache efficiency.
  • New WebberZone Admin banner on Better Search admin screens for quick access to admin pages.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where the setup wizard notice could display on the wizard page.
  • Fixed parsing of excluded category slugs.
  • Fixed a translation string in the settings form.
  • Fixed handling of < and > in boolean search mode.
  • Fixed Boolean mode didn't work in some cases even when enabled in the Settings page.

• Security:

  • Fixed a stored XSS vulnerability.

Full Changelog: 4.2.1...4.2.2

Full Changelog: 4.2.1...4.2.2-beta1

• Modifications:

  • Updated Freemius SDK to v2.13.0.
  • Upgraded Settings API.
  • Improved text highlighting.
  • Fuzzy Search functions are now deleted and recreated from the admin screen button.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where the setup wizard notice could display on the wizard page.
  • Fixed parsing of excluded category slugs.
  • Fixed a translation string in the settings form.
  • Fixed handling of < and > in boolean search mode.
  • Added a filter to bypass the main WordPress query for search requests when seamless mode is disabled, ensuring the plugin's custom template is used.

• Security:

  • Fixed a stored XSS vulnerability.

Changelog

• Modifications:

  • Updated Freemius SDK.
  • Handle post_type when passed through as a query variable.
  • Added REST API support for custom post type search queries.

• Bug fixes:

  • HTML entities are now decoded in the Live Search results.
  • Phrases with double quotes are correctly handled.

Full Changelog: 4.2.0...4.2.1

Full Changelog: 4.2.0...4.2.1-beta