Search inside your PDF documents. Index text-based PDFs and show their content in WordPress search.

WebEquipe

Sarwar Hossain

<p><strong>WebEquipe PDF Search</strong> indexes your PDF files and makes their text searchable. When visitors search your site, they see results from both your posts/pages and the content inside your PDFs.</p>
<h4>Video</h4>
<p>Watch the setup and usage guide: <span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YKdGUjkK4bA?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe></span></p>
<h4>Supported PDFs</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Works with:</strong> Standard, text-based PDFs (the kind you create or export from Word, Google Docs, etc.). File size default 50MB, configurable up to 500MB in settings.</li>
<li><strong>Does not work with:</strong> Scanned PDFs or image-only PDFs (no extractable text)—use OCR elsewhere first. Password-protected PDFs cannot be indexed.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Keep Private PDFs Out of Search</h4>
<p>Need to hide or protect certain PDFs? Use <strong>Exclude</strong> so a PDF is never indexed and never appears in search—even when you run “Re-index All PDFs” or bulk index. Excluded PDFs stay in your Media Library; they just won’t be searchable. Use <strong>Include</strong> later to allow indexing again. You can exclude or include PDFs from the Media Library or from <strong>Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search</strong> (Manage PDFs).</p>
<h4>How to Use</h4>
<ol>
<li><strong>Install and activate</strong> the plugin.</li>
<li>Go to <strong>Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search</strong>.</li>
<li>Click <strong>Re-index All PDFs</strong> to index existing PDFs (new uploads are indexed automatically by default).</li>
<li>Use your site’s search or add the shortcode <code>[webequipe_pdf_search_form]</code> on a page—PDFs will appear in results.</li>
</ol>
<p>Existing PDFs need to be indexed once; after that, new uploads can be indexed automatically (optional in settings). To hide specific PDFs from search, use <strong>Exclude</strong> on them (Media Library or Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Manage PDFs).</p>
<h4>Settings at a Glance</h4>
<p>All options are under <strong>Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>General</strong> – Turn indexing on/off, include PDFs in WordPress search, maximum file size (50MB default), excerpt length.</li>
<li><strong>Indexing options</strong> – Batch size for re-indexing.</li>
<li><strong>Search display options</strong> – Show or hide PDF icon, file size, page count, last updated date, and thumbnail preview in search results.</li>
<li><strong>Advanced</strong> – Debug logging, memory/timeout for large PDFs, background processing, delete data on uninstall.</li>
</ul>
<p>Full details and shortcode options: <strong>Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search Help</strong>.</p>
<h4>What You Can Do</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Full-text search</strong> – Search inside PDF content, not just filenames.</li>
<li><strong>Control each PDF</strong> – Index, unindex, or <strong>exclude</strong> from the Media Library or the PDF list on the settings page.</li>
<li><strong>Bulk actions</strong> – Index, unindex, include, or exclude multiple PDFs at once.</li>
<li><strong>Search display</strong> – Show PDF icon, file size, page count, and excerpts (configurable in settings).</li>
<li><strong>Shortcode</strong> – Add a PDF search form with <code>[webequipe_pdf_search_form]</code> (see <strong>Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search Help</strong> for options).</li>
<li><strong>Background processing</strong> – Large PDFs are processed in the background to avoid timeouts.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Troubleshooting</h3>
<h4>PDFs not appearing in search</h4>
<p>Ensure PDFs are indexed (Media Library <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> “Search Indexed” column), “Enable Search Integration” is on in Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search, and the PDF is not excluded. See the FAQ for more.</p>
<h4>Indexing fails or times out</h4>
<p>Use Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Advanced: enable “Background Processing” for large PDFs. Ensure your server PHP memory_limit and max_execution_time are sufficient for very large files (see Help for details). Reduce “Batch Size” if re-indexing many PDFs at once.</p>
<h4>Other issues</h4>
<p>See the FAQ above and <strong>Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> PDF Search Help</strong> for full documentation.</p>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p>The plugin stores extracted PDF text and metadata in a custom database table and a compressed backup in WordPress post meta for PDF attachments. If debug logging is enabled, it stores recent log entries in a WordPress option. It does not collect or send visitor data. If your PDFs contain personal or sensitive information, that content is in the index; mention this in your privacy policy if required.</p>
<h3>Third-Party Libraries</h3>
<ul>
<li>smalot/pdfparser (LGPL-3.0) – PDF text extraction</li>
<li>symfony/polyfill-mbstring (MIT) – multibyte string support</li>
</ul>
<h3>Credits</h3>
<p>Developed by <a href="https://webequipe.com" rel="nofollow ugc">WebEquipe</a>. Uses <a href="https://github.com/smalot/pdfparser" rel="nofollow ugc">smalot/pdfparser</a> for PDF text extraction.</p>
<h3>Support</h3>
<ul>
<li>Support: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/webequipe-pdf-search</li>
</ul>


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