Search is critical for your site, but the default search for WordPress leaves a lot to be desired. Improve your user experience with the Apache Solr search engine for your WordPress website. Fast results, with better accuracy. Enables faceting on fields such as tags, categories, author, and page typ
PricingFree downloadThe WordPress.org download is free. Pro versions, add-ons or external services may cost extra.
CompatibilityRequires WordPress 4.6 and PHP 7.1.
SourceWordPress plugins · Oct 26, 2026
01 / Source details
Aboutthistool.
Search is critical for your site, but the default search for WordPress leaves a lot to be desired. Improve your user experience with the Apache Solr search engine for your WordPress website.
Fast results, with better accuracy.
Enables faceting on fields such as tags, categories, author, and page type.
Indexing and faceting on custom fields.
Drop-in support for WP_Query with the solr_integrate parameter set to true.
Completely replaces default WordPress search, just install and configure.
Completely integrated into default WordPress theme and search widget.
Very developer-friendly: uses the modern Solarium library
Development
This plugin is under active development on GitHub:
https://github.com/pantheon-systems/solr-power
Please feel free to file issues there. Pull requests are also welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for information on contributing.
For further documentation, such as available filters and working with the SolrPower_Api class directly, please see the project wiki:
You may notice there are two sets of tests running, on two different services:
PHPUnit test suite against a Solr instance.
The Behat test suite against a Pantheon site, to ensure the plugin’s compatibility with the Pantheon platform.
Both of these test suites can be run locally, with a varying amount of setup.
PHPUnit requires the WordPress PHPUnit test suite , and access to a database with name wordpress_test . If you haven’t already configured the test suite locally, you can run bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh wordpress_test root '' localhost . You’ll also need access to a running Solr instance, in order to run the unit tests against Solr.
Behat requires a Pantheon site with Solr enabled. Once you’ve created the site, you’ll need install Terminus , and set the TERMINUS_TOKEN , TERMINUS_SITE , and TERMINUS_ENV environment variables. Then, you can run ./bin/behat-prepare.sh to prepare the site for the test suite.
Note that dependencies are installed via Composer and the vendor directory is not committed to the repository. You will need to run composer install locally for the plugin to function. You can read more about Composer here
WP-CLI Support
This plugin has WP-CLI support.
All Solr Power related commands are grouped into the wp solr command, see an example:
$ wp solr usage: wp solr check-server-settings or: wp solr delete [<id>...] [--all] or: wp solr index [--batch=<batch>] [--batch_size=<size>] [--post_type=<post-type>] or: wp solr info [--field=<field>] [--format=<format>] or: wp solr optimize-index or: wp solr repost-schema or: wp solr stats [--field=<field>] [--format=<format>] See 'wp help solr <command>' for more information on a specific command.
You can see more details about the commands using wp help solr :
**NAME** wp solr **DESCRIPTION** Perform a variety of actions against your Solr instance. **SYNOPSIS** wp solr <command> **SUBCOMMANDS** check-server-settings Check server settings. delete Remove one or more posts from the index. index Index all posts for a site. info Report information about Solr Power configuration. optimize-index Optimize the Solr index. repost-schema Repost schema.xml to Solr. stats Report stats about indexed content.<h3>WP_Query Integration</h3>
Use Solr in a custom WP_Query instead of querying a database. Add 'solr_integrate' => true to the query arguments.
NOTE: Currently, only basic queries, tax_query, meta_query and date_query are supported. See examples/example.custom_WP_Query.php for an example.
A meta_query can use the following compare operators:
'='
'!='
'>'
'>='
'<'
'<='
'LIKE'
'NOT LIKE'
'IN'
'NOT IN'
'BETWEEN'
'NOT BETWEEN'
'EXISTS'
'NOT EXISTS'
( 'REGEXP' , 'NOT REGEXP' , and 'RLIKE' are not supported.)
Configuration Tips
Searching by author name
To support searching by author name (e.g. where “Pantheon” would return posts authored by the “Pantheon” user), add the following to your custom schema.xml :
<copyField source="post_author" dest="text"/>
Boosting relevancy score by publish date
The following guidance can be used to extend the Solr index and modify boosts beyond just this example.
To support math functions on dates, you must add a custom schema.xml to Solr and reindex with the new schema .
<?php /** * Hooks into the document build process to add post date field in proper format. */ function my_solr_build_document( $doc, $post_info ) { $post_time = strtotime( $post_info->post_date ); // Matches format required for TrieDateField $doc->setField( 'post_date_iso', gmdate( 'c\Z', $post_time ) ); return $doc; } add_filter( 'solr_build_document', 'my_solr_build_document', 10, 2 ); /** * Hooks into query processor, Dismax, to add publish date boost. * See: https://www.metaltoad.com/blog/date-boosting-solr-drupal-search-results */ function my_solr_dismax_query( $dismax ) { $dismax->setQueryParser( 'edismax' ); $dismax->setBoostQuery( 'recip(abs(ms(NOW/HOUR,post_date_iso),3.16e-11,1,1))' ); return $dismax; } add_filter( 'solr_dismax_query', 'my_solr_dismax_query' );
is_solr_query Filter
The is_solr_query filter controls whether Solr should be used for a specific query.
Parameters:
$enabled (bool): Indicates whether Solr should be used for the query. Defaults to true if the query is a search or if solr_integrate is set in the query.
$query (WP_Query): The current WordPress query object.
Return:
bool: true to enable Solr for the query, false to disable it. add_filter( ‘is_solr_query’, function( $enabled, $query ) { if ( $query->is_category( ‘news’ ) ) { return false; } return $enabled; }, 10, 2 );
Custom schema file path
By default, custom schema is sourced from wp-content/uploads/solr-for-wordpress-on-pantheon/schema.xml . This can be overridden with an absolute path using the the solr_power_customer_schema_file_path filter.
Parameters: * $custom_schema_file_path (string): Default path to a custom schema file
Return: * string: Absolute path to a custom schema.xml file.
Failing to post the schema.xml will result in an error during indexing, “Missing post_date_iso field.”
If you have the field and type in the schema, but don’t add the solr_build_document filter, you will get a similar error.
If the post_date_iso field is missing from the index, Solr will ignore this boost and return regular results.
Trying to use a regular date field for the boost query will result in an error in the request instead of results.
Explicit Commit vs Autocommit
Once solr has sent the data to the solr server, solr must COMMIT the data to the index and adjust the index and relevancy ratings accordingly before that data can appear in search results.
By default, Solr Search for WordPress has auto-commit disabled. The index is committed when the uncommitted item is two minutes old, or the cron runs. By default, the cron runs on the Pantheon platform every hour.
When autocommit is enabled, Solr Search for WordPress commits data when it sends every post. When running on Pantheon, we recommend leaving autocommit disabled to aid overall site performance.
To enable autocommit, add the following to wp-config.php or an mu-plugin.
define( 'SOLRPOWER_DISABLE_AUTOCOMMIT', false );
To force-commit data outside of a normal cron run, from the command line, you can run the command below or simply force a cron-run.
wp solr commit
02 / Source details
Gettingstarted.
The Solr Power plugin can be installed just like you’d install any other WordPress plugin.
Because Solr Power is intended to be a bridge between WordPress and the Apache Solr search engine, you’ll need access to a functioning Solr 3.6 instance for the plugin to work as expected. This plugin does not support other versions of Solr. The plugin also requires PHP 7.1 or higher.
If you’re using the Solr Power plugin on Pantheon, setting up Apache Solr is as easy as enabling the Apache Solr add-on in your Pantheon dashboard. Once you’ve done so:
01Configure which post types, taxonomies and custom fields to index by going to the Indexing tab of the Solr Power settings page.
02Index your existing content by going to the plugin options screen and selecting the applicable Actions : Index Searchable Post Types
03Search on!
04See the examples/templates directories for more rich implementation guidelines.
If you’re using the Solr Power plugin elsewhere, you’ll need to install and configure Apache Solr. On a Linux environment, this involves four steps:
05Install the Java Runtime Environment.
06Run ./bin/install-solr.sh to install and run Apache Solr on port 8983.
07Configuring Solr Power to use this particular Solr instance by setting the PANTHEON_INDEX_HOST and PANTHEON_INDEX_PORT environment variables.
08Copying schema.xml to the Solr configuration directory (a path similar to solr/conf/schema.xml ).
Alternatively, there are a couple of community-maintained Docker containers you may be able to use: kalabox/pantheon-solr , kshaner/solr .
In a local development environment, you can point Solr Power to a custom Solr instance by creating a MU plugin with:
<?php /** * Define Solr host IP, port, scheme and path * Update these as necessary if your configuration differs */ putenv( 'PANTHEON_INDEX_HOST=192.168.50.4' ); putenv( 'PANTHEON_INDEX_PORT=8983' ); add_filter( 'solr_scheme', function(){ return 'http'; }); define( 'SOLR_PATH', '/solr/wordpress/' );
** Note for Lando users **
If you are using lando for development, the MU plugin is not needed. Lando auto configures everything for your local environment to connect to the docker index it maintains and if you overrite the ENV variables it will mess with that configuration.
03 / Source details
Frequently asked questions.
Where do I report security bugs found in this plugin?
Please report security bugs found in the source code of the Solr Power plugin through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program . The Patchstack team will assist you with verification, CVE assignment, and notify the developers of this plugin.
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