Athenian Site Search
product details.
Athenian Site Search adds live search suggestions, mixed product and content discovery, and reusable shortcode or widget search experiences to WordPress and WooCommerce. It helps teams surface relevant products, posts, pages, and platform content through lightweight discovery tools that fit existing site layouts while keeping data, permissions, and automation aligned with the broader Athenian Platform…
Athenian Site Search is a lightweight WordPress and WooCommerce search experience plugin that upgrades the default site search box into a branded, commerce-aware discovery layer. It adds live AJAX suggestions, WooCommerce product and category awareness, SKU matching, result-group filters, product-category chip mode, hovercard product enrichment, shortcode placement, widget support, and token-aware frontend styling.
The plugin is designed for storefronts, marketplaces, brand sites, content hubs, and mixed WordPress/WooCommerce properties where visitors need to quickly find products, categories, pages, posts, custom post types, and related taxonomy content from one polished search interface.
For WooCommerce stores, Athenian Site Search can surface product thumbnails, prices, SKUs, descriptions, add-to-cart URLs, category thumbnails, category breadcrumbs, product counts, and nested subcategory context. For WordPress content sites, it provides a reusable search component that can be dropped into headers, landing pages, sidebars, builder templates, and custom layouts through ath_search or the classic Athenian Search widget.
Rather than requiring an external hosted search platform, Athenian Site Search stays close to native WordPress and WooCommerce data. It uses REST API routes, standard WordPress queries, WooCommerce product APIs, SKU/meta lookup, taxonomy queries, client/server caching, configurable settings, and developer filters for scoring, integrations, defaults, labels, and response customization.
Live Site Search
Add a Reusable, Branded Search Experience Anywhere on WordPress
Athenian Site Search renders a compact live search interface with AJAX
suggestions, keyboard navigation, result panels, filter chips, shortcode
placement, widget support, and configurable frontend behavior.
| Search Layer | Customer Experience Value |
|---|---|
| Live Suggestions | Show results as visitors type with debounce timing, request cancellation, loading states, and repeat-query caching. |
| Shortcode Placement | Embed the same search component in headers, pages, landing pages, sidebars, templates, and builder layouts with
. |
| Widget Support | Use the classic Athenian Search widget while keeping markup consistent with shortcode output. |
| Accessible Navigation | Support keyboard navigation with Arrow keys, Enter, Escape, ARIA state handling, outside-click closing, and panel visibility controls. |
- Primary shortcode:
- REST suggestions endpoint:
/wp-json/ath-search/v1/suggest. - Configurable minimum characters, debounce timing, result limits, hover delay, cache TTL, placeholder, and no-results text.
- Supports token-aware styling with a plain fallback mode for non-Athenian themes.
Commerce Discovery
Help Visitors Find Products, SKUs, Categories, and Catalog Paths Faster
When WooCommerce is active, Athenian Site Search becomes a product discovery
tool with SKU-aware matching, product thumbnails, price display, category
results, nested category filtering, and product hovercard enrichment.
Show product title, image, price, SKU, description, and eligible add-to-cart URL
Prioritize exact, prefix, and contains matches against product SKU metadata
Surface product categories, subcategories, breadcrumbs, product counts, and category thumbnails
| Commerce Layer | How It Helps |
|---|---|
| Product Search | Combines WooCommerce search, SKU/meta lookup, filter-injected candidates, and scoring heuristics. |
| Product Scoring | Boosts SKU matches, title matches, token matches, in-stock products, and purchasable products. |
| Category Results | Displays WooCommerce product categories as first-class searchable results with hierarchy and product-count context. |
| Hovercards | Fetches enriched product data from /wp-json/ath-search/v1/product-card for portal-style product previews. |
- Supports product/category-only search with
- Supports product category filter mode with
filter_mode="product_categories". - Includes descendant category matching for scoped product discovery.
- Works as a lightweight merchandising layer without requiring a separate hosted search index.
Configurable Discovery
Control Result Groups, Styling, Caching, Search Scope, and Platform Integrations
The plugin gives administrators and developers control over search behavior,
result groups, product/category modes, enabled content types, cache timing,
theme styling, scoring, labels, and Athenian ecosystem integrations.
| Configuration Layer | Operational Purpose |
|---|---|
| Result Groups | Enable filters for products, categories, pages, posts, custom post types, taxonomies, and Athenian integration types. |
| Admin Settings | Configure live search, WooCommerce inclusion, SKU search, thumbnails, prices, chips, default groups, limits, and style mode. |
| REST Payloads | Return normalized product, category, content, and taxonomy results through public visitor-facing REST endpoints. |
| Theme Tokens | Map search UI colors to Athenian/site tokens with a plain fallback mode for standalone deployments. |
Search that fits the platform:
Athenian Site Search can stay lightweight for simple WordPress sites while
extending into WooCommerce catalogs, Athenian Swap Shop listings, custom
post types, taxonomies, product categories, and future analytics-driven
discovery workflows.
- Stores plugin configuration in
ath_search_options. - Exposes filters such as
ath_search_product_candidates,ath_search_product_score, andath_search_suggest_payload. - Uses client-side caching, server-side caching, result limits, query normalization, and request debouncing for performance.
- Builds toward search analytics, synonym management, indexed search, block/editor widgets, quick-add flows, and Athenian Data Intelligence reporting.