It was a little weird for a while there and I’m still not exactly sure what was causing some of the issues, but I cleared out a bunch of the code and rewrote it, and now the filtering is working again. For long lists of results, it’s still a server intensive process, so on rare occasions it will dump the user back at the front page, but for the most part it’s working even better than it was before the switch to custom post types.

The end result is what I wanted, so I’m not gonna complain. Really glad that I didn’t have to just drop the feature entirely, it’s one of my favorite ways to use the database!

Quick refresher:

You can use filtering to really refine a list, getting a huge variety of results. Some parts are limited right now, like the character filter, because not every character is tagged in ever book, but you can still get really good results.

Say I want Batman books in the 1960s. I’d put “Batman” in the title field and “196” in the date field (I don’t want to limit to a specific year, especially because dates are most often ranges. Here’s the result, 18 books that meet my criteria. I might want to see if there are any other books that collect Batman comics that don’t have the word “Batman” in the title. So I can type “Batman” in the issue field instead. Or maybe I want to try “Detective” to look for Detective Comics in the 60s.

Getting the idea?

Obviously, you might not find exactly what you want on your first set of results – maybe the book you are looking for covers a wide range and the date is in there as 1954-1973 – so “196” wouldn’t work. But it’s still a really powerful tool, and should help you guys a LOT when putting your collections together.

Feel free to ask me any questions you have about Filtering your lists!

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