Comments on: WordPress Hack #3: Custom Search Results Page and Template

By: rishwan

rishwan — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:32:07 +0000

I have a question. I have made a custom theme with a custom search page to show the search results. I have managed to make it work, but only that the WP codex showed me the code which only prints out the post title and the meta data.

I looked at your code and modified mine to show the post content too. The problem here is.. when this is done.. it shows pages in full too in the search results. SO I am wondering if there is a way to limit the number of lines printed as search results for posts and page contents.

I would love to know.. please email me back!

By: admin

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:41:22 +0000

no.

By: Adam@Investment Management Marketing EverydayTenacity

Adam@Investment Management Marketing EverydayTenacity — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:48:59 +0000

This is a great article. Just another thing to add to my to do list as I customize out my blog.

Are any of the steps different when using WP 2.8 and above?
.-= Adam@Investment Management Marketing EverydayTenacity´s last blog ..Attention Investment Managers: new platform to syndicate video content =-.

By: Ruben@OurBlogLog

Ruben@OurBlogLog — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:15:17 +0000

Excellent Tutorial , Before this I never touched the php files for the search feature. Thanks Alot

By: admin

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:46:15 +0000

Look through my 30 Wordpress hacks series home page and read the articles on wordpress templates. Many, if not most, Wordpress themes I come across don't have a search.php at all. This is not uncommon. Learn the WP template hierarchy for themes. A theme can consist of only a half dozen files, or dozens and dozens. In theory you could run an entire barebones them on just a single index.php and a single stylesheet. You see, if there is no search results page template (search.php) then by default every theme reverts back to index.php and displays search results there. You can create your own search.php from your index.php and customizing it.

By: Bjorn Lindstrom

Bjorn Lindstrom — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:22:00 +0000

Hi,

I really liked your post … extremely helpful and informative, way beyond anything I have found out there. As an ex-programmer, and new to wordpress, I am eager to read the rest of your articles.

I do have one question however … my particular template does not have a “search.php”. I have looked everywhere, and can’t even find it anywhere in my website server directory structure! Is it safe for me to create a search.php? I would like to modify mine to use a more familiar “manufacturer, model, color” type search, combine some of them to be used for the wordpress article / post search, but then use those elements to perform my own product-specific search in my own MySQL database.

I don’t need to know how to do database queries and lookups, I know that already … just need to know how to tap into search.php when I can’t find it anywhere on my server.

Thanks,

Bjorn

By: Eduardo Marques

Eduardo Marques — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:09:08 +0000

Nice article about custom search results. On my particular case I kept the original wordpress search and added a google search after wordpress’s results. This way you can make sure the visitor gets your most recent posts and he also has the option to use google to get more relevant search results. If none of my posts attends what he seeks he can also follow another link provided by google’s search. Oh… and you can use it with Adsense too!
.-= Eduardo Marques´s last blog ..Motor de busca do WordPress x Google|Wordpress search engine x Google =-.

By: kuld33p

kuld33p — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:10:42 +0000

thanks for the tip man. I really liked your 30 hacks in 30 days post. .-= kuld33p´s last blog ..How to : Display Related Posts in Vigilance Theme Wordpress =-.

By: rohin

rohin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:44:52 +0000

this has been helpful , but what about trying to create your own search.php with custom filters to search specific parts of your website. I'm dying to find out how to do that =)] rohins last blog post..Optimization of Your Website’s Load Time

By: REP

REP — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:27:58 +0000

Thanks for the very useful article. I’m going to modify the search page templates for my sites in this manner. A trifle OT, but I agree that Google Custom Search is not the way to provide search for one’s own site, but I do think that a Google custom search engine, monetized with Adsense, can be a nice addition to a site. If nothing else, it helps earn a little bit of money from the “bounce” traffic. And I found that registering some custom search engines in a few places earned me a few back links. And, among other things, by having a search engine that people can add to the Google toolbar, and/or add to search box in the upper righthand corner of their browser can bring them back to the site for return visits.