Hi Joshua
To answer your questions
1) When displaying results as an archive option in admin, then results will load slower than if using a shortcode (see the “display results tab”). This is because the archive method essentially loads the next page, extracts the html content, and updates your results. So if your pages are heavy, have lots of code/plugins etc in, then the ajax loading will also be affected.
The shortcode method runs a custom query and fetches the results from wp-ajax.php
– this means you have a lot less loading to do and hopefully that will help with your bottlneck.
Do you have a link I could check? There may be other influences I could identify.
Also have you checked our demo – http://demo.designsandcode.com/sfpro-movie-reviews/search/ – this is using the archive method and usually takes no more than a couple of seconds to load results (its also on cheap shared hosting which means it shouldn’t be particularly fast).
2) I’ve added jQuery events to hook into, so you can detect when loading begins and when it finishes – this way you can show/hide any element you want on your page – for more on that see http://www.designsandcode.com/wordpress-plugins/search-filter-pro/faqs/ with these jQuery events:
$(".searchandfilter").on("sf:ajaxstart",function(){
//show loader
console.log("ajax start");
});
$(".searchandfilter").on("sf:ajaxfinish",function(){
//hide loader
console.log("ajax complete");
});
3) There is a hook you can use to update the page title, however, if you are using the shortcode method I’ve described above, then the page title will be set on the page you embed your results shortcode on 🙂
Let me know!
Thanks