Account Setup
Connect your Opensolr account and create a search index — the plugin handles all the heavy lifting automatically. Enter your credentials, click a button, and your index is ready to receive content.
Step 1 — Enter Your Credentials
On the Settings tab, enter your Opensolr account details:
- Email — the email address you registered with at opensolr.com
- API Key — found in your Opensolr dashboard under the API section
Create a free Opensolr account — it takes 30 seconds. Every plan includes a search index, the web crawler, and full-text keyword search out of the box.
Step 2 — Save & Connect
Click Save & Connect to validate your credentials against the Opensolr API. The plugin verifies that your email and API key are correct and loads your account information.
Once connected, you will see your Account Summary showing:
Plan Name
Your current Opensolr subscription plan
Index Count
How many search indexes you are currently using vs. your plan limit
Disk Usage
Storage consumed by your indexes with a progress bar showing capacity
Bandwidth & Documents
Monthly bandwidth usage and total documents indexed across all indexes
Step 3 — Create Your Search Index
You have two options for setting up your search index:
Create New Index (recommended)
Click Create New Index and the plugin handles everything automatically:
- Generates a unique index name:
wp_{hash}__dense - Downloads the optimized Solr configuration from Opensolr
- Uploads the configuration to your Solr cluster
- Reloads the index so it is ready to accept documents
- Saves the elevation configuration
A progress dialog shows each step in real time. The entire process takes about 10 seconds.
Use Existing Index
If you already have an Opensolr index (from a previous installation or another site), select it from the dropdown. The plugin will upload its configuration to the existing index.
Selecting an existing index will upload the WordPress plugin's Solr configuration to that index. If the index already contains data with a different schema, the configuration will be overwritten. Make sure this is what you intend before proceeding.
Step 4 — Register Your Sitemap and Start Crawling
After your index is created, the next step is to get your content indexed:
- Go to the Content Types section and choose which post types to include
- Switch to the Data Crawler tab to register your sitemap URL and start your first crawl
- Optionally, enable Data Ingestion for real-time content sync on every post save
The 5-Step Setup Flow
When you click Create New Index, the plugin runs through these steps with a live progress dialog:
1. Validate
Confirms your email and API key are correct by querying the Opensolr API
2. Create
Creates a new Solr index on your nearest cluster with an auto-generated name
3. Configure
Downloads the optimized schema and config, uploads them to your new index
4. Reload
Reloads the Solr index so the new configuration takes effect immediately
5. Elevation
Saves the default elevation configuration for query pinning and exclusion
Your search index is now live and ready to receive content. Next step: choose your content types and then start the web crawler to index your site.