Want to create advanced search forms in WordPress without writing code?
Even if you have what your visitors are looking for on your website, you are losing business if they cannot find it, which is why you need a good search form.
It will help you reduce frustration and increase engagement with your content, providing an improved user experience.
An ideal search form is quite challenging to create with the default WordPress search, as it’s time-consuming and requires expert coding skills.
In this article, we will show you how to create advanced search forms in WordPress.
Why Use Advanced Search Forms on Your Site?
Before we get to the tutorial, let’s talk about why you might need more than just a standard search bar.
We have seen that when visitors can’t find what they need quickly, they usually leave the website.
An advanced search form helps prevent this by acting like a smart assistant that filters out the noise.
It lets your users narrow down their hunt to specific categories, tags, or even custom post types right from the start.
This means someone looking for a “video tutorial” won’t get stuck reading through “text articles.”
We have found that this specificity keeps visitors happy and helps them engage more with your content.
Now, let’s look at an easy way of adding advanced search forms to your WordPress website.
The Best Way to Create Advanced Search Forms
The easiest way to build these specific search forms is with a plugin like SearchWP.
SearchWP is the best search plugin for WordPress because it enhances the search experience on your site and replaces the weaknesses you’ll find in the default search.
It allows us to create multiple unique search engines that can be tuned to look for exactly what we want.
For example, you can use it to create one search bar that looks only for products and another that looks only for support articles. It handles all the heavy lifting in the background to make sure your visitors get the right results instantly.
Here are a few other things we love about SearchWP:
- Search PDF content: It can read the text inside your PDF files, so users can find documents easily.
- Exclude specific pages: You can use this to hide specific pages or areas, like the checkout pages or admin content to keep the results clean.
- View search statistics: It tracks exactly what people look for, so you can see what content is popular on your site.
- Fuzzy search: This feature helps users find the right result even if they make a spelling mistake in their query.
With that, let’s look at how you can set up SearchWP to create an advanced search form.
Install And Activate SearchWP
To get started, you will need to grab your copy of the SearchWP plugin. You can do this by visiting the website and setting up a new account.
Once done, head over to the Downloads tab on your SearchWP account and click Download SearchWP.
We would also recommend copying your license key from the same screen; it will be required after a few steps.
Now, you can install and activate SearchWP like any other plugin. If you are not sure how to do that, you can check out this beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activation, you will see the setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Start Onboarding Wizard’ button on the welcome screen to finish the initial setup.
Configure Search Engine for WordPress
First things first: you need a search engine for your search form to work.
The built-in WordPress search engine is a basic one and does not include custom post types, eCommerce products, document content, or taxonomies, to name a few.
To set up the search engine, you can head to SearchWP » Algorithm in your WordPress dashboard. Here, you have the option to edit the default engine or create new ones.
Besides that, you can select which sources to include by clicking the Sources & Settings button.
By default, SearchWP will include Posts, Pages, and Media as sources. However, if you have an eCommerce store, then you can add ‘Products’ as a source.
Similarly, if you’re running a digital downloads store using Easy Digital Downloads, then make ‘Downloads’ searchable on your website.
SearchWP also lets you add additional information in the search process. For example, you can include custom fields, categories, and tags.
To learn more, please see our guide on how to change your WordPress site’s default search settings.
Create Advanced Search Forms In WordPress Without Code
Using SearchWP, you can create a search form in WordPress in 3 easy steps.
Now, let’s see this in action step-by-step.
Step 1: Add New Form
First, you’ll need to navigate to SearchWP » Search Forms.
From here, you can then click on the Add New button.
You’ll get a new form with a system-generated name. Let’s give it a meaningful name, like Product Page Search, so it can be recognizable down the road.
You can do that by clicking the pencil icon on the top left.
Step 2: Configure The Form
The effectiveness of a search form depends largely on its design and functionality. So, let’s pick a Layout Theme from the predesigned template in SearchWP.
You can see the Theme Preview right beneath the layouts. Go ahead and pick the one that serves you the best.
You can also control the layout and features by tweaking the Custom Styling settings. Let’s go over the settings one by one.
Category Search: Enabling this will show a category filter dropdown in the search form. It will show all the available categories. However, you can limit the categories by using the Select Category field below.
Quick Search: It promotes custom words right below the search form; with this, you can incentivize visitors to use these search terms if turned on.
Advanced Search: It gives your visitors more control over their search capabilities and lets them narrow their search results.
Any or all of these settings can be turned on independently.
Now, we can use different engines for different search forms. If you want to show different results on various forms, you can also benefit from using a supplemental engine.
Let’s stick with Default, as we configured that in the previous step. You can also let the form know which search results page to use by selecting one from the dropdown menu.
As we have already discussed, SearchWP uses its engine to perform search, and what is to be indexed can be defined within the search engine by selecting sources. When a search form uses an engine, it limits the results to only that particular engine.
You can put even more restrictions on the form by using the following two settings:
Type of search: The search engine used by this form uses multiple sources. Selecting them here limits the search to one or more sources. If you leave this field blank, the engine will use all the available sources.
Select Category: You can put even more restrictions and limit the search only to a particular category. For a category to show up here, it must have at least one item assigned to it. Similar to Advanced Search, your visitors can control search results by selecting their chosen category if Category Search is enabled. Please note the categories you put in here are the ones that will be displayed in the dropdown.
Now, it’s time to customize the search form. Put the text you want to be shown as a placeholder inside the search form by using Field Label, and if you want the search form to have a button, turn on the Search Button.
Quick Search Items: Enables you to nudge the visitors in the direction you want. It lets you put specific keywords under the search form so the users can select what you want them to look for! You can add these keywords by selecting them from the dropdown. The suggestions you see here come from Metrics if you have it enabled; if not, they are based on Statistics.
Advanced Search Filters: You can give visitors more control and help them find exactly what they are looking for by letting them use multiple filters. SearchWP currently has support for Authors, Post Types, and Tags.
Step 3: Style The Form According to Your Taste
SearchWP provides you with 4 different styles for the search form. You can pick one you like from the list, and you can also customize the color and font size of the form.
You may also like to modify the search button according to your taste. There are 3 button styles, so you have the ability to name the button and customize the background color, font color, and font size.
Please note that the modification will only work when the Search Button is turned on.
When you have the form you want perfectly configured, you need to store all the changes.
Simply click the Save button in the top right corner.
Step 4: Use the Form According to Your Need
Now that your search form is configured, you can put it anywhere on your site. To do that, click on Embed right next to the Save button.
There are a few options to embed your search form with just a few clicks. SearchWP offers 3 options: Gutenberg block, shortcode, and PHP Code.
Select how you want to embed the form and follow the instructions.
For instance, if you want to put the search form using a shortcode, select ‘Shortcode’ from the list, and you’ll be presented with the shortcode associated with the form.
Go ahead and copy and paste it to your desired location. You can then paste the shortcode by opening the desired page.
Besides that, you can also add your search forms to any page or post using the SearchWP Form block.
First, you will need to edit the page and open the WordPress content editor. From here, click the + sign and add the ‘SearchWP Form’ block.
Once that’s done, you can then select your search form from the dropdown menu in the block.
After adding the form, you can update or publish your landing page or blog post.
Voila! The setup is complete, and your search form is ready for action!
The best part about using SearchWP is that it also works with popular page builders like Elementor, Divi, Oxygen, and more.
Wrapping Up
Using the same technique, you can configure as many custom search forms as you like with only a few clicks.
If you want different search forms to show different results, you can do that by leveraging the supplemental engine.
SearchWP removes the barrier to coding and enables you to add an advanced search with custom settings. It also comes with countless other features that will improve the search experience for your visitors significantly.
We hope this article helped you learn how to create an advanced search form in WordPress effortlessly without writing code. You may also want to see our guides on how to create custom field filters in WordPress and how to include ACF fields into search results on your WordPress site.
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