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Requirements and install

Product Search installs like every other extension sold here. Follow the shared procedure rather than a Product Search-specific one:

The OpenCart releases it runs on

OpenCart 4.0.2.0 is the floor, and a store older than that gets nothing at all: no settings and no event registrations, so the storefront search is untouched. Product Search's own screen is what tells you why, naming the version you have and the version you need.

4.0.2.0, 4.0.2.1, 4.0.2.2, 4.0.2.3, 4.1.0.1, 4.1.0.2, 4.1.0.3 and 4.1.0.4 are the releases a full install-to-uninstall pass has been through, and they are the only ones claimed. 4.1.0.0 is not, because OpenCart's own price sort is broken there. See Limits, and the settings screen says so while you are on it. A release newer than 4.1.0.4 installs and runs, and says on the screen that it is untested, which is not the same as known to be broken. Product Search registers nothing on OpenCart's scheduler, so the broken cron.php on 4.1.0.4 costs it nothing.

The permission

extension/product_search/module/product_search

Tick it under both Access Permission and Modify Permission, at step 3 of the shared procedure, for every user group that should configure search.

One entry covers Product Search's own screen: the settings, the synonym groups, the merchandising rules and the report all live on that one route. Access is what opens the screens; Modify is what saves, clears and deletes on them. A group with access and no modify can read the report and cannot act on it.

Enabling it also grants two screens to the user group that enabled it, because every Kyvero extension ships them and nothing else in the store grants them:

  • Personal Data, under Customers, answers what each installed Kyvero extension holds about one named person. Product Search's answer is nothing, stated on the screen rather than left out. Its route is extension/product_search/customer/personal_data, under Access Permission.
  • Remove everything held about a person, at extension/product_search/customer/purge, gets both Access and Modify. Product Search holds nothing about anybody, so it opens on an empty plan.

Any other user group that should see either needs those routes ticked by hand. See what this holds about a person.

Enabling Product Search gives your own user group both permissions, but permissions are read when you sign in, so log out and back in before the screen will open. That is step 3 of the shared procedure, and it is the most common reason a freshly installed extension appears to do nothing.

Where the screen is

Extensions → Extensions → Modules → Product Search → Edit.

There is no entry in the left-hand menu, and that is OpenCart rather than an omission: module-type extensions do not get one at either supported release. If you are going to be on the screen often, bookmark it.

What installing creates

  • Four tables holding your synonym groups, your merchandising rules, the daily search counters, and Product Search's own copy of your settings. None of them is ever dropped; see limits and guarantees.
  • Seven settings, listed in the settings reference.
  • Event registrations: four that put Product Search in front of the storefront's search, two that serve its own screens' language, and two for the Personal Data screen and its menu entry. The reference lists them. Removing the extension removes all of them, and core's own search answers the very next request.

Product Search is off until you switch it on, on its own settings tab. Enabling the module in OpenCart's extension list is not the same thing: an extension that changed what your storefront found the moment it was installed would be making a decision you have not made yet.

What an update keeps

Take the old version off and put the new one on, in the order the shared page describes. OpenCart will not upload a new archive over the old one.

OpenCart implements an update as an uninstall followed by an install, and it deletes a module's settings on the way through. Product Search keeps its own copy of them, the on/off status included, and puts them back, so an update does not silently revert your store to core's search or reset your retention window. The one exception is detailed logging, which comes back off, the way a fresh install has it. Your synonym groups, merchandising rules and search counters are in tables that are never dropped, so they are still there.

Nothing has to be re-granted: permissions live on the user group and no part of this touches them. You may have to log out and back in again.