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WordPress Search & Filter – A Simple Search and Filtering Plugin for Taxonomies

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WordPress Search & Filter is a simple search and filtering plugin.  It is essentially an advancement of the WordPress search box, adding taxonomy filters & post filters to really refine your searches.

You can search by Category, Tag, Custom Taxonomy, Post Type or any combination of these easily – you can even remove the search box and simply use it as a filtering system for your posts and pages.

After my own requirements of needing some granular filters applied to my searches I tried a few free plugins online and found none quite did what I need, there are many plugins that enhance the search box, and there are others that allow filtering of taxonomies but none that combine the two and are free (as far as I can tell).

The best free plugin I found was the Query Multiple Taxonomies Plugin – however it did not allow you to search at the same time as applying the filters.

And so the Search & Filter plugin was born:

 

Download Wordpress Search & Filter

Grab the download any of these sources:

WordPress Plugins GitHub

How To Use

To display Search & Filter all you need to do is a use a shortcode:

[searchandfilter fields="search,category,post_tag"]

This will display a search box, a category dropdown and a tag dropdown. You can use the shortcode within posts/pages and widget areas.

To use this within a theme file you simple need to call the `do_shorcode` function with the shortcode above within the theme file:

<?php echo do_shortcode( '[searchandfilter fields="search,category,post_tag"]' ); ?>

Documentation

Official documentation can be found on our docs site which contains usage examples and advanced settings & features.

Screenshots

[metaslider id=946]

Need More?

Get the pro version:

  • Search with Ajax 🙂
  • Filter by Date, Author & Post Meta / Custom Fields
  • Sort results by Post Meta / Custom Fields
  • Range Sliders and Range Fields for Meta Data
  • Drag and Drop user interface – makes it incredibly easy to build a granular search form
  • Works with WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields Plugin & more
  • Dedicated Support

Find out more

Links

– Official Documentation
– WordPress.org Plugin
– Github Project

331 Responses to “WordPress Search & Filter – A Simple Search and Filtering Plugin for Taxonomies”

  2. Jillian

    Hi there,

    Your plugin is great! Although it doesn’t seem to properly filter specific selections. For example; I have three taxonomies: manufacturer, year, condition. When I pick a manufacturer, then a year and a condition (new or used) it doesn’t filter out all the other years, instead they all show under that manufacturer name.

    But if I filter by the year and condition it works great.

    Here’s a link to the website for you to review: http://thetoybox.ca/wordpress/
    Search area under the main image.

    I am using Types for my CPT. Maybe I set something up wrong?

  3. ALIBERT

    Hi Moss,

    Great job, thank you very much !
    I’ll send a ticket about your plugin to my french circle !

    Actually, the plugin only gives exact result if we check several matches.
    How can we give an approximative result, from exact match to approximate match.
    For example, search post by checking tags to give, first, posts with all exact tags followed by posts with some exact tags to finish by posts with only one of correct matches.

    thanks for help.

  4. george

    Great plugin……….how can you make a search with the results only for post_tag? Currently, you have a dropdown option of all the post_tags…..but how can you have a regular search box to only search post_tags without the use of the drop-down?

    • Hi George, unfortunately the plugin doesn’t support being used like that – it builds a form for searching, which allows you to restrict the search to specific categories/tags/taxonomies, but it doesn’t support constraining a search to a specific type only – it does however allow this with custom post types.

      Thanks for checking out the plugin 🙂

  5. portugal massage

    Hello.
    First let me say this is a great plugin.
    But I´m having trouble with the widget size. My theme is responsive so I don´t know if that´s a problem. I don´t understand anything off css, could you help me teeling me the css code for automatic adjust in the widget area. I´m sorry if my english isn´t very good.
    Regards
    Portugal Massage

    • Hey there, unfortunately I can’t help too much with different users css/themes but I’ll give you a pointer – hopefully this CSS will do what you need:


      .searchandfilter
      {
      width:100%;
      }
      .searchandfilter ul, .searchandfilter > ul li, .searchandfilter input[type=select], .searchandfilter input[type=radio], .searchandfilter input[type=multiselect], .searchandfilter input[type=checkbox], .searchandfilter input[type=text]
      {
      display:block;
      width:100%;
      }

      It makes sure that the form is 100% width of the container at all times, so if you are on a responsive theme the elements should hopefully resize to keep inside the container – if it doesn’t work I’m afraid you’ll have to get practising with CSS!

      Thanks

  6. Georgia

    Hello!

    Great plugin thanks.

    I’m using the checkbox option:

    [searchandfilter fields=”category” types=”checkbox”]

    I was wondering how to remove the “—” mdash before the checkbox?

    Thanks

  7. M. Jacobs

    Hey all,
    Great plugin! I have one question though. I tried to insert it in a page template. When I use the simplest shortcode there is no problem. As soon as I try to add headers for the search boxes ans a different text for the submit button (using shortcode: [searchandfilter fields=”category,post_tag” submit_label=”Filter” headings=”steden,u wilt…”] ), it stops wordking. Is it only posible to insert the simple shortcode or am I overlooking something? Thanks in advance! Grts, M.

  8. Steve

    Hi,

    This is probably the best search filter plugin I’ve found so far.

    I was wondering if there was a way to exclude certain category or tag IDs. Also, for the drop-down, can we rename the first item to something else other than “All Categories” or “All Tags”?

  9. Justin

    Awesome plugin! just what I’m looking for. One issue, however:

    I have a CPT: ssbd_birds
    and 2 tax: ssbd_birdtypes, ssbd_regions

    I have custom templates used for archive-ssbd_birds, taxonomy_ssbd_birdtypes, and taxonomy-ssbd_regions.

    the search and filter works perfectly everywhere except from the archive-ssbd_birds template. Do you know why this might be?

    archive-ssbd_birds template: http://wildbirddigest.com/birds/

    it works everywhere else (including all taxonomy pages , ie: blackbirds)

    any tips greatly appreciated.
    Thanks!

    • Hey Justin, looks like the template might not be kicking in?

      You’ve named your two templates differently –

      `
      taxonomy_ssbd_birdtypes
      taxonomy-ssbd_regions
      `

      One is using a hyphen, and one using an underscore? 😉

  10. Jos Schuurmans

    “(…) you can even remove the search box and simply use it as a filtering system for your posts and pages (…)”

    I should probably get some sleep, but this is the one I’m having trouble understanding. How can I display search results without offering the search field first? Sounds like a great feature though…

    BTW, great plugin, Ross! Thank you so much. I will submit a postitive review to the wordpress plugin directory.

  11. Wes

    Love the plugin, works great! but i was wondering if there were any plans in the future for adding the “for” attribute to the ‘s corresponding to checkbox and radio button’s ids? ie: I tend to like the flexibility of using an unordered list with checkboxes instead of a few examples of what i’m talking about: http://codepen.io/onediv/pen/ngude and http://codepen.io/Merri/pen/HhiKx
    anyways, thanks again for the fantastic plugin!

    • Hey Wes, this looks like something I might build in to the plugin in the future, however its not likely I’ll build in support for external scripts like this unless they are standardised in some way or are really popular :/

      Thanks for checking out the plugin 🙂

  12. Tony Oravet

    This plugin is awesome! Quick question: Is it possible to limit specific categories in the shortcode? I’m wanting to use this feature to only search through specific categories. Thanks for any help you may be able to provide.

    • Hey Tony, unfortunately the plugin doesn’t include/exclude categories – I’ll be bringing that to a future version though

  13. deniz hernandez

    I can’t get that multiple drop down in the side widgets… What am I doing wrong?

    • Hey Deniz sorry just seen this – the place place for support is over on the WordPress plugins page… Are you still having a problem?

  14. Kemi

    Fantastic plugin! Exactly what I needed and saved me a ton of time!!!

  15. neal

    Hey great plugin. But I want to populate 2nd dropdown based on selection in 1st dropdown menu. How I can do it?

    e.g.
    in 1st dropdown-list of country-US,UK,france

    when I select on US, in 2nd dropdown it should show state of US only

    so in 2nd dropdown- Arizona, Texas,Newyork etc.

    Please provide solution as soon as possible

  16. Way

    Hi Ross!

    The Plugin I use together with Search & Filter is Relevanssi. When both are activated, the Search & Filter will return results with bolded keyword. Again I hope you will include this in your next update, so I and probably a lot of other users too won’t have to use other plugin just for this purpose.

    Thanks again for this very simple yet great plugin.

  18. Way

    Hi Ross!

    After several testing, I found out that version 1.2.2 may be conflicting with one of my plugins (the previous versions were compatible).

    After I disable that plugin (although I lose some functionalities, e.g. Bolding of keyword in the search result), it is working fine again.

    I am sorry. I guess I wouldn’t say exactly that the new version got a problem when it can still work after I disable other plugin.

    I think it would be nice if, in your next update, you can include the function that would highlight or bold the keywords in the search result. Thanks!

    • Hi Way

      I think I know what may be the problem :/ Basically in the new version there is some code to try to force load the search template which I think may be interfering… I’m going to do an update today, so you will have an option to enable/disable this – so basically you can use the new version, with the old setting so it doesn’t interfere..

      Can you tell me the name of the plugin you are using that is causing the conflict?? I would like to do some testing 🙂

      Thanks

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