Create custom search forms in WordPress
on October 29, 2013
Are you looking to add a separate, custom search form in WordPress and limit it to say, a specific Custom Post Type? Here’s how I did it:
1. Create a search form template
While you could paste the new form directly into a template, I chose to create a separate template to house the form: artwork-search.php (My custom post type is Artwork). This search function was designed to limit the results to only the Artworks Custom Post Type. Here is the HTML5 style form I used in this template:
<div class="widget artwork-seachform search" rol="search">
<h3 class="widget-title">Search Artwork</h3>
<form role="search" action="<php echo site_url(‘/’); ?>" method="get">
<input type="search" name="s" placeholder="Search: Enter artwork keywords hit enter"/>
<input type="hidden" name="post_type" value="artworks" /> <!– // hidden ‘your_custom_post_type’ value –>
<input type="submit" alt="Search" value="Search" />
</form>
</div>The key is the ‘hidden’ input field. Change the value to your own custom post type name.
2. Load the template part into your template
Now you can load that file into your template using get_template_part :
[php]<?php get_template_part( ‘search’, ‘artwork’ ); ?>[/php]
The form will now appear an you can style it as you would normally. But what about the search results? What template gets used?
3. Post Type Archive template
To display the search results, WordPress will first look for archive-$posttype.php if you have it. Otherwise it will fall back to index.php. If you happen to use Hybrid Core you can also fall back to archive.php.
The great thing in my case is that I’d already styled the archive-artworks.php template, so my search results looked fantastic, appearing just as the normal artwork archive pages do.
Conclusions
I’ve seen some pretty complex tutorials for creating a separate search form in WordPress. This method worked for me and was overall pretty simple.
This method may or may not work using other WordPress content types. I tried adding a custom taxonomy to the hidden input, but it wouldn’t return any results.
Update: Sebastian points out in the comments that you may need to name your search file search-artwork.php. I use Hybrid Core which uses a modified template hierarchy which is why I named it the way I did.
Nice article, there is a mistake on the first line, it should be search-artwork.php for the template part otherwise it wont load when called.
Thanks Sebastien, I\’ve updated the post to reflect this. Since I build on Hybrid Core, the modified template hierarchy requires the naming convention that I used. It would probably be better to write the tip from the point of view of non-Hybrid Core users, but I\’ve used it for so long that I sometimes can\’t separate it from standard WordPress development.
Thanks for the reply, i didn\’t know about hybrid core but i will look into it. Might come in useful
Hi,
Thanks for the tip. How can I create a page that will show the search bar and query a custom post type I created?
Your article is excellent but it search only one field. I want to search 2 field of a post type how can i do?
Can you elaborate Chinmay? Not sure what you mean by searching \’2 field of a post type.\’
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Sure thing meenu, I\’ll PM you and we can get this solved for you.
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I’d love a custom search form with this post type: wprss_feed_item. So, using the code from your tutorial, would i simply do the following?
Create a new template file and throw it under my theme directory? (correct me if im wrong about this location)
Paste your code almost word-for-word, replacing only value=artworks with wprss_feed_item?
And finally the most important part is to display said form in a widget (either as a proprietary widget or through a shortcode)
I feel like i ALMOST have it working, but….it just wont work.
Enjoy your week!
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I need a help in customizing my search box
as I am using plugin “Search Everything” but it does not give the desired output