Introduction
UM Faceted Search is a WordPress plugin that adds a live, AJAX-powered filter sidebar to any Ultimate Member Member Directory. Instead of making visitors scroll through hundreds of member cards to find someone relevant, UM Faceted Search lets them narrow results instantly by country, industry, skills, experience level, salary range, registration date, or any other custom field stored in your member profiles.
What is Faceted Search?
Faceted search (also called faceted navigation or guided navigation) is a filtering technique that shows multiple independent filter groups simultaneously. It is the same technique used by Amazon to filter products by price, brand, and rating at the same time. UM Faceted Search brings this pattern to Ultimate Member member directories.
1.1 Why Your Member Directory Needs It
A member directory without good filtering is like a search engine without a search bar.
As your community grows, visitors quickly lose the ability to find the right people. UM
Faceted Search solves this by:
- Reducing time-to-find — visitors reach the right member in seconds, not minutes.
- Increasing directory engagement — members who can easily find others return more often.
- Improving conversion — if your directory drives leads, hires, or connections, better discoverability means more conversions.
- Supporting larger communities — the plugin is designed to scale to directories with thousands of members.
1.2 Plugin Summary
| Feature | Description |
| Plugin name | UM Faceted Search |
| Version | 1.0.0 |
| License | GPLv2 or later |
| Requires WP | WordPress 6.0 or higher |
| Requires PHP | PHP 7.4 or higher |
| Requires plugin | Ultimate Member (must be installed and active) |
| AJAX-powered | Yes — results and counts update without a page reload |
| Configuration | Per-directory, inside WP Admin → Ultimate Member → Member Directory |
Requirements & Installation
2.1 Installation
Follow these steps to install and activate the plugin:
If Ultimate Member is not active, WordPress will show an error and deactivate the plugin. Activate Ultimate Member first, then reactivate UM Faceted Search.
1. Log in to your WordPress admin panel.
2. Navigate to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin.
3. Click Choose File and select the um-faceted-search.zip file you downloaded.
4. Click Install Now, then click Activate Plugin.
Tip: After activation, no directory is changed automatically. You must enable faceted search on each directory individually. See Section 3 for the configuration walkthrough.