Adding Enterprise Search to WordPress with Viglet Turing
WordPress ships with a built-in search that runs a LIKE query against the
posts table. It works for a handful of posts, but on a real content site it
has no relevance ranking, no facets, no typo tolerance, no autocomplete, and it
slows down as your database grows. Most teams reach for a SaaS layer
(Algolia, ElasticPress + hosted Elasticsearch) and start paying per
record and per query.
This guide shows the open-source alternative: indexing WordPress into Viglet Turing, an Apache-2.0 enterprise search platform you self-host, with faceted search, semantic navigation, and generative AI (RAG), and your content staying on your own infrastructure.
The connector is a WordPress plugin, not a Java service
The Adobe AEM connector is a Java plugin loaded into the Viglet Dumont process. The WordPress connector works differently: it is a PHP plugin you install directly inside WordPress. It talks to Turing over HTTP, so there is no separate connector JAR to run.
Indexing is event-driven, with no cron or scheduled re-crawl:
| WordPress event | What happens |
|---|---|
| Post/page published | Extracted and sent to Turing |
| Published content updated | Index updated automatically |
| Content trashed / deleted | Removed from the index |
| Published → draft/private | Removed from the index |
For the first load, the admin panel bulk-indexes all posts or pages in batches of 250.
Step 1: Run Turing
The fastest path is Docker:
docker pull ghcr.io/openviglet/turing-ce:latest
docker run -p 2700:2700 ghcr.io/openviglet/turing-ce:latest
Open http://localhost:2700/console, set the admin password on first run, and
create a Semantic Navigation (SN) Site. This is the index your WordPress
content will land in.
Step 2: Install the WordPress plugin
Copy the plugin folder into your WordPress installation and activate it:
wp-content/plugins/viglet-turing-for-wordpress/
Then activate it in WordPress Admin → Plugins.
Step 3: Connect to Turing
In Settings → Viglet Dumont, point the plugin at your Turing server:
| Field | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Host | localhost | Turing hostname |
| Port | 2700 | Turing port |
| Path | /dumont | Base path for the indexing endpoint |
| Site Name | wp-search | The SN Site you created in step 1 |
Click Ping to confirm the connection, then Index all Posts and Index all Pages to populate the index.
What gets indexed
The plugin extracts a rich document per post, not just title and body:
| Field | Source |
|---|---|
title, content | Post/page title and full content |
contentnoshortcodes | Content with WordPress shortcodes stripped |
permalink | Canonical URL |
author, type, date, modified | Metadata |
categories, tags | Multi-valued → become facets automatically |
numcomments, comments | Comment count and (optionally) comment text |
| Custom fields | Any custom fields you configure |
The key win: WordPress categories and tags become filterable facets with zero mapping. You can also include custom post types and selected custom fields, which the native WordPress search ignores entirely.
Multisite
The plugin supports network installs. Activated network-wide, it indexes every
blog in the network and tags each document with blogid, blogdomain, and
blogpath, so a single search box can span the whole network.
Step 4: Query it
Your WordPress content is now searchable through the Turing API, via REST, GraphQL, or the SDK:
# Faceted search
curl "http://localhost:2700/api/sn/wp-search/search?q=tutorial&rows=10&_setlocale=en_US"
# Autocomplete
curl "http://localhost:2700/api/sn/wp-search/ac?q=tut&_setlocale=en_US"
The plugin also ships a search-results template (turing4wp_search.php) with
facet rendering and autocomplete styling, so you can surface the new search
inside your theme without building a front end from scratch.
Step 5 (optional): Conversational answers (RAG)
Because Turing already holds your WordPress content, turning on RAG gives you grounded AI answers with citations over your own posts, with the LLM of your choice (OpenAI, Ollama, Anthropic, Gemini):
curl "http://localhost:2700/api/sn/wp-search/chat?q=How+do+I+reset+my+password"
Why open-source for WordPress search?
- Your content stays in your infrastructure: no per-record SaaS pricing, no data egress.
- Categories and tags → facets with zero mapping, real-time event-driven sync, custom post types and custom fields included.
- Search + semantic + RAG in one platform under Apache 2.0.
Next steps
- 📘 WordPress Connector: full reference
- 📗 Semantic Navigation and RAG guides
- 📙 How to add enterprise search to Adobe AEM, the same approach for the other major CMS
- ⭐ Star Turing on GitHub
- 💬 Ask in GitHub Discussions
Viglet Turing is open-source (Apache 2.0) enterprise search with semantic navigation and generative AI. Self-host it, index WordPress, Adobe AEM, databases, file systems, and web content, and own your search stack end to end.