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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”

  1. Dear Ross,

    Your plugin is great! Thank You.

    I am facing a styling issue… As you can see in the attachments… I am using custom taxonomies and my terms are really long. So, I changed thru custom css all elements “display: inline-block” to “display:block”. I would like the Headers and the box elements to be under “Theaters Guide”, in my widget area, in order to have more space for my long terms. As you can see google chrome faces different issue than mozilla.

    Screenshots
    http://imgur.com/a/Tm5HP

    I will really appreciate your help.

    Thank You in advance.

    • Ross

      Hey there, this is really a CSS issue – I would suggest to look at the css option `max-width` – I’m afraid this is something you’ll need to figure out yourself as its quite specific to your setup.

      Thanks

  2. I don’t have the settings needed to actually use plugin. No add new form, or any of those settings seen in the demo video. Just the Search & Filter tab with details on how to use the plugin. I’m using the twenty fourteen theme

  3. Andrew Levy

    When i submit my search results via the search bar or category selector. it redirects me to a new URL. obviously this URL has no template and the search results look terrible. What is a way around this?

    • Ross

      Hey Nadja

      It should work with any theme. You can get the search form looking the same no problem using the drag and drop builder – but the style & layout of results will either have to be based on a template in your theme (where there may be compatibility issues) or you can create your own template (templates are completely customisable using the same code as creating standard WordPress templates).

      Thanks

  5. I was wondering how to exclude specific categories from showing up on the category filter on this plugin? Cheers

  6. Niels

    Can you link 2 taxonomies so when e.g. you have football teams in different countries, you can select a country and in the next taxonomy it only shoes the teams linked to that country?

    • Ross

      Yup – almost – just check the movie demo – demo.designsandcode.com/sfpro-movie-reviews/search/ – try to change “film certificate” and notice how the genres change.

      Thanks

  7. Hello,

    The following shortcode works great except for the operators:
    [searchandfilter fields=”brands,category,post_tag” types=”checkbox,checkbox,checkbox” headings=”Brands,Categories,Keywords” submit_label=”Select themes” hide_empty=1,1,1 operators=”AND,AND,AND”]

    No matter, what I try (one string, three string, caps or not), the result is an or/or/or list. Is it me, or is it the bug you are referring to.

    Thanks,

    Wil Ransz

    • Ross

      Hi there

      Its recently been brought to my attention a bug in the plugin makes the operators case sensitive – which means they must actually be lowercase “and,and,and” – I’ll be fixing this shortly so case does not matter again.

      Thanks

  8. It shows 404 and cant figure out who. It does it only with Job Listings. It even did it with on specific category name and not with another ?

  9. Hi.

    Thanks for such a great plugin. I have only one question. Is it possible to add the archive dropdown as well within the filter ? Archive dropdown is the default one but i wanted to use that within the your filter form. So that i can select category, month and hit Submit.

    Anxiously waiting for your reply.

    Regards,
    Abdul Mannan

    • Ross

      Its a good suggestion and been on my to do list for a while – although I can’t say when that will be exactly.

      • Thanks for replying. Really appreciate that.

        Well whenever you will update the plugin with this feature, please remember to leave a message here 🙂

        Regards,
        Abdul Mannan

  10. Hi Ross

    My previous question seems to have been deleted…

    I’m using the free version of the plugin, searching based on two categories. I’ve noticed that the searched field will only persist (after searching) in one of the two dropdown boxes. Is this intentional/easy to fix? Is it something that is working properly on the pro version?

    Many Thanks

    Gavin

    • Ross

      Hey Gavin

      I’m not sure about your issue, but no such issue exists in Pro – if you do have any issues we’ll provide support to fix 🙂

      Thanks

  11. Made good progress using this helpful plugin. I tried to add the option for “operators=”,OR”” though and it seemed to have no effect. Then I noticed that although you list this option on the documentation page, it isn’t listed in the plugin page itself. Is this option actually available? I hope so since I think I won’t be able to use the plugin if it only returns AND results for multiple checkboxes.

    Thanks for making this!

    • Ross

      The AND/OR option does work, although someone opened a bug on the forums mentioning it seemed to be case sensitive (it shouldn’t!) – try with lowercase and/or

      Thanks

  12. Can I include only certain post types in the form? I don’t want pages/posts to show but just my custom post types.

  13. giuseppe

    Hi,
    how do I change the text in the dropdown “all categories” “All tags” “All post types” with a text at will?

  14. PB

    Hi there,

    I’ve successfully added the short code to the page I want it to appear on by using the docs, but when I try to filter it it shows no results when there should be.

    What does “use within a theme file mean” in the docs? Do I need to add that code somewhere too?

    Thanks!

    • Ross

      — edit – wrong post previously – try updating to the latest version of the plugin and let me know.

      Thanks

  18. Paul

    Hi there,

    Does the Pro version of your Search & Filter plugin support custom fields (i.e. those created in Advanced Custom Fields – ACF)? I think that the standard version of your plugin does not, is that correct?

    The plugin looks great for my needs if it does support ACF.

    Many thanks for your time,

    Paul

    • Ross

      Yup, if you check the features list it supports the basic types 🙂 Thanks

  19. Alex

    Hello dear Ross, I have some specific problem with search and filter. I have custom post types divided into several categories under one custom taxonomy. Categories have sub categories, and want to use AND operator to have a results. Problem is, when I select for example in first field (multiselect) some sub-category, ajax renders the result corectly. But when I select second field and sub-category, in the url it removes first selected and leaves just second selected – it acts like I use OR, not AND. If I remove first field selected sub-category, it removes everything from the url, although still second field haves sub-category selected. Searched everywhere for an answer but just couldn’t find the solution. Regards, Alex

  20. Hey,

    I have the search & filter pro.
    I created a form and added a taxonomy dropdown. the problem is that it is empty although the taxonomies are not empty.
    I tried to install the regular search & filter and then the taxonomies are shown.

    What could be the problem?

    thanks