Reworking SearchWP’s Advanced Settings Screen – Part 3

After adjusting the game plan to include additional Extension roll-in, I got back to work in building out the new Advanced settings screen based on the rough sketches I came up with. That process went pretty well as I started to adapt to my qualms that inspired the rebuild of the screen.

I got as far as I had gone with my sketches and quickly realized more thought needed to be put into what was going on here. I had reworked the Advanced settings screen as it sat, but it left a number of big items to be considered:

• Ignored search management
• Stopword management
• Synonym management
• Engine configuration import

I went back to the drawing board and started to experiment in the browser by laying out containers for everything to see what made sense. It was slow going, and it always came back to a single element that I just couldn’t make fit anywhere: Manage Ignored.

I started to second guess this whole thing — did merging these Extensions even make sense, or was I out in left field (which is prone to happen)?

And then it occurred to me: the reason I’m struggling to find a place for Manage Ignored is because it’s in the wrong spot! If you’re managing the search terms you’ve ignored for stats, why wouldn’t you do that on the Stats screen itself?! I feel foolish admitting it, but this kind of thing happens all the time as I’m building products. It’s all too easy to end up down a rabbit trail or two simply because you’ve been head’s down on an idea without taking a break to review the landscape.

Another piece of the puzzle

With this gained enlightenment I started work on the logical next step: rebuilding the Stats screen too. Much like the Advanced settings screen itself, it had been a while since I reviewed the stats screen. Integrating management of ignored search queries was a good catalyst to updating the whole thing as there were a few additional hooks I wanted to add while I was at it.

In talking about the update with a friend it was also suggested that the resetting of statistics also belongs on this page because that action is out of context when placed on the Advanced settings screen as well.

Updating the Stats screen wasn’t originally part of the plan for SearchWP 3.0 but I’m glad to have it done as it solved a couple of problems that arose when trying to rework the Advanced settings screen. I was able to utilize a few components I came up with when building Metrics (the advanced version of the Stats screen) and turn it into something a bit more useful to all customers.

▶︎ To be continued…