Filter is taking too long to narrow down taxonomy filters

Hey Karan

I think you might be running into a limitation here.

The feature you describe is the “auto count” feature. Doing this dynamic count and updating the fields is generally very expensive at it requires a lot of complex logic, its actually the entire reason we have a cachcing system at all.

Without the caching system you could only have a couple of hundred posts before you notice any slow down.

With our cache I’ve tested up to 3/4k before noticing significant load times.

If you disable auto count does it work quicker?

This is actually the next thing I’ve been meaning to look into, I think what would need to be done is to integrate these requests with a caching plugin.

Its pretty much next on my to do list – but at this stage I don’t know how easy it this will be (and in that case how long it will take)…

Thanks

Hi Karan

I am aware the other similar plugins have the same limitation – in fact, most don’t even have a caching system built in, meaning they start to slow at 1k posts or less with this kind of feature enabled.

I think for really large sites, until I build more advanced caching system you might be looking at some kind of elastic search integration:

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/fantastic-elasticsearch/
http://wptavern.com/review-of-wp-elasticsearch-plugin

This means outsourcing all the processing to another specially designed server designed to handle this.

I’m afraid that may be the only feasible way forward.

Apart from that, all I can think of is one more option, which is not too hard to add to S&F, which is to have drill down taxonomy fields.

This means, a taxonomy will be hierarchical, and S&F will only show the parent terms. When clicking on a parent term, the child terms appear as another field, and so on. So you drill down into the content.

This would give a similar effect as auto count, and requires almost no additional processing (it very easy to ask “what are the children of the this term”) – you wouldn’t get the count numbers, but you would get only relevant options showing.

Let me know if that is feasible at all and I’m happy to prioritise this feature.

Thanks

Hi Karan

I would be happy to do this, but please consider the following to options:

1) You could automate updating your taxonomies – so you could write a script with a bunch of conditions that goes through your posts and reassignes things in to a new taxonomy.

Alternatively after just looking there seems to be a great plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/term-management-tools/ – if you don’t know, I would absolutely trust anything by scribu so was a bonus finding that just now

This option, with adding drill down lists, has been on my todo list for ages – so it was coming as a feature soon anyway – which makes it easy to prioritise.

2) To go down this road you suggest, could be long and dangerous (for me) – this stuff is hugely complex, and I couldn’t even give you an accurate timeline as it requires a lot of research before even beginning something like this. Its on the roadmap as I want this feature availble to high volume sites.. but its not going to be quick..

Anyway look at option number 1 if you can, try creating a demo with a sample structure (using a single taxonomy for the areas you need to behave like autosuggset) to get an idea for it – and send it to me to look at so I can confirm that we are on the same page –

I highly suggest option 1, as it looks like it can happen soon – without any additional cost to you.

Option 2 will be a lot further down the road, even if I was to develop as a custom implementation for you.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks