New and Improved Wordpress Plugin! Now with more hijacking ability…

by Tara Anderson in Company on August 15th, 2008

After a lot of work, we are proud to introduce something new for our WordPress.org users. If you like the Lijit search and want it to be integrated on your site in a more, how shall we put it, hijacked fashion, then this plugin is for you.

As everyone knows, you can currently install the Lijit widget on your blog in the traditional, add-the-code-to-your-sidebar kind of way. But now, with this new Wordpress plugin, you can keep the current search bar you have on your WordPress blog, but have Lijit power the search results. It’s like magic.

It looks like a normal search bar, but when you do a search, BAM! Search results brought to you courtesy of Lijit.

Like any other Wordpress plugin, you can find the Lijit Search (version 1.0) in the plugin directory. Or HERE.

Once you download the widget, simply log into your WordPress dashboard, go to the plugin page and activate it. Upon activation, you get to choose whether you want to use your existing Lijit account or you can create a new one inside the WordPress admin console.

You can also choose between the classic widget install option OR hijack the existing WordPress search box and make it Lijit-enabled.

But wait! That’s not all. We’ve also included another super-cool feature…integrated statistics. You love the stats that Lijit gives and now you can see those from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard. Simply click on your Lijit stats and you’ll see all that detailed goodness, telling you exactly what you need in order to keep your readers happy.

Many of you asked for a better way to integrate Lijit search on your WordPress blog and here it is. With a cleaner and tighter feel, Lijit and Wordpress.org are playing even better together than ever.

***This plug-in is only available for those WordPress users with versions 2.3-2.6.***

We would like to thank the great team at Crowd Favorite for helping us to make this happen. And by all means, let us know what you think of the plugin. We think it rocks, but are more excited to hear your thoughts.

Happy hijacking!


  • Carol

    I want to thank you for yet another fantastic post. I am always searching for great WordPress tips to recommend to my readers. Thank you for writing this tutorial . It's just what I was trying to find. Truly amazing post.

  • Carol

    I want to thank you for yet another fantastic post. I am always searching for great WordPress tips to recommend to my readers. Thank you for writing this tutorial . It's just what I was trying to find. Truly amazing post.

  • @Carol Glad to hear it. Let us know if you have any questions or additional feedback. All the best!

  • sounds awesome will have to try this one out

  • Hey Joshua,

    Thanks for the comment and the kind words.
    I believe you can do at least some of what you're asking without much trouble. Send us an email at support at lijit dot com, and I will see if I can pull something together to get you started.

    Thanks for spreading the word.

  • love the hijack feature. Disclaimer, I'm a bit of a noob with running my own hosted site, as you'll see from my blog, which is still a work in progress. However, i'm not afraid to monkey with code, make mistakes, learn.

    question: love the explore feature. Is there any way I can grab code for just that little piece? My idea is I'll have the search hijacked on my site, but I want my visitors to be able to see the explore feature as well as the my content features in a different section. Is it possible to break these pieces out and display them elsewhere on a site?

    Anyhoo, killer stuff, I'm an "evanjilist" now. Thanks for any help you could provide.

    Cheers,

    Josh

  • Hey David,
    We agree on the configuration stuff. We plan on continuing to tweak and adjust the admin features for the plugin based on user feedback, and will try to roll some of that into the next full version.

    I looked at the search box text issue you mentioned, and it looks like we are just inheriting the styling from your CSS. You could try adding a new CSS block that is more specific to override the default searchform color that is getting set. Example : #searchform #s{color:#F3F3F3;}
    If you need any help with any other styling issues or technical questions, feel free to send me an email at dweiss@lijit.com .

  • Great plugin. I've been waiting for something like this so I wouldn't have to modify the themes on my blogs.

    One thing - it would be helpful if the style of the text being displayed could be modified from the admin page. For those of us who host multiple sites from the same set of WordPress files (which also includes WordPress-MU users), it would really help us integrate this functionality into our sites. I'm using the existing WordPress search widget and the text displayed within the search box is displayed as black text, but the search box itself is gray, which makes the text hard to see.

    Thanks,
    David

  • Ari, after checking out your site, you should have no problems with the plugin. Thanks for the kind words!

  • This is a smart move guys. I liked Lijit before but was unable to configure it without it altering my theme too much or displaying context as it wanted with little reward for my overall layout. If it can take over my search box and maintain my form and still give me lijit results, then you are on your way to expanding the h * * * out of the lijit use across the board.

    I will download it now and install it since I am already signed up with you guys. I look forward to those details search results reports. Thanks.

    p.s. would i have to do any mods beyond installation since I do have an EN, ES site?

  • This is awesome! I will still keep the legit logo though beside my search to always support you guys. :) Good work.

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