Feature Request — Dynamic Category Scoping via Shortcode Parameter

Hi Ivory Search Team,

First of all, we’d like to say that Ivory Search has been a great addition to our stack. We use it extensively across our documentation site, and overall it has been reliable and performs very well—so thank you for the solid work.

We wanted to share a feature request based on a real-world use case that we believe could benefit many documentation or knowledge-base driven websites. Use Case

Our site hosts documentation for multiple products, each organized under its own category hierarchy. We use a single search form across hundreds of these product-specific documentation pages.

From a user experience standpoint, when someone is browsing documentation for Product A, we want the search to return results only from Product A’s category, rather than from the entire documentation site. This helps keep results relevant and avoids cross-product confusion. Current Limitation

At the moment, Ivory Search allows category filtering through the form configuration in the admin panel. However, this configuration is static—it applies globally to that search form and cannot be changed dynamically at runtime.

There is currently no way to pass a category (slug or ID) into the shortcode when rendering the form, which limits flexibility for context-aware search implementations. Suggested Enhancement

It would be extremely useful if the shortcode supported dynamic category parameters, for example:

[ivory-search id="xxxxxx" title="Documentation" category="category-name"]

or using a term ID:

[ivory-search id="xxxxxx" title="Documentation" category_id="123"]

This parameter could either override or further restrict the category settings defined in the admin configuration on a per-instance basis. Why This Matters

Adding this capability would make the shortcode significantly more flexible, especially for:

• Multi-product documentation sites
• Knowledge bases with sectional navigation
• Context-aware search experiences

It would allow developers to reuse a single search form while dynamically scoping results based on the current page context. Current Workaround

We’ve managed to implement this behavior using a combination of:

• Custom the_posts filtering in PHP
• JavaScript interception of AJAX requests

However, this approach is more complex and less maintainable than a native solution within the plugin.

We believe this enhancement would be widely useful and align well with how modern documentation platforms handle scoped search.

Thanks again for your work on the plugin, and we appreciate your consideration of this feature request.