What is the best course of action to install and use an app?

Store Design
1

Hey guys,

So I would Like to download the Smart Search & Instant Search App by Searchanise. From some stores that have downloaded it, I can tell it would work for us. The App overall has very good reviews, however, there are a few that point out what could be an incredible disadvantage.

These reviews mentioned the Search Function not working, and consequently, some collection pages not loading any products at all. Searchanise did reply to these reviews mentioning that they encountered certain problems with their system and were working on fixing it as soon as possible.

While I know that problems like these may occur from time to time, I do not like the fact that if their system goes down, it stops working on our website as well and causes bigger problems like products not appearing.

So my question is, what would be the best course of action to actually install this app, or any app for that matter?

If I install an app, does it install on all your themes? or just the live one?

Is it an option to install it on one theme, and if it goes down, I just switch over to a Backup Theme. Once fixed, I switch back to the main theme?

Thanks in advance!

2

Is it an option to install it on one theme, and if it goes down, I just switch over to a Backup Theme. Once fixed, I switch back to the main theme?

This is best way.

3

Hi @TMartUS ,

Hope you are doing well. When you installed any apps, backup your theme is an essential step. If your theme/apps have any problem, you can backup it.

Hope this information is useful.

4

Hi there, Julia from the Searchanise team is here.

We strive to provide our customers with the most reliable service we can, but incidents happen, unfortunately. Let me tell you a bit more about what happens if our server is not available.

If something goes wrong on our side, our widgets won’t show any results. However, if you have a default search in your store, your customers will still be able to use it.

As for the collections pages, there are two different ways you can set up your Filters on Collections functionality: via link redirects or via code. In the first case, if you remove the app or its service is not available, your customers will see the default collections pages, so the store will be still functional. If you decide to set up your filters with the code, you will need to make sure you removed it before uninstalling the app, because the app custom code is meant to replace your default theme code. In case the service is not available, the products from your collections pages won’t be displayed.

The Filters on Collections code is added manually to your theme files, so you can make a backup of your theme just to make sure you always have a default working theme.

As for different themes, the app scripts are added to each theme you have in your store automatically, so it’s not possible by default to publish the theme that doesn’t have them. You can still disable the app manually for your theme by adding the .snize-exclude-input class to your search bar in theme files. In this case, both our Instant Search widget and Search results widget won’t be loaded for this search bar, and, as a result, for this theme.

If you face any issues with the app, don’t hesitate to contact our support team via Help Center form, we will be happy to investigate the situation for you and provide a solution!