Search everything (posts, pages, tags, cpt, meta)

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I would like to know how to use the built in wordpress search to return results from all content on my site. Specifically, I want to search;

  • posts
  • pages
  • tags
  • custom post type (portfolio)
  • custom taxonomy used in custom post type (skill, client)
  • metaboxes used in custom post type (portfolio_caption, portfolio_excerpt, portfolio_credits, portfolio_links)

I would like one search form and don’t need to limit the search to certain post types or categories. Just enter the search term > click search > see matches from all content on my site. Simple 😉

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Update: Preferably, I would achieve this through a function or custom database query rather than using a plugin. This is because I’m developing a theme and want this functionality included out of the box rather than requiring a user to download a plugin. (title changed)

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3 comments

  1. DeluxeBlogTips.com 1) has an article on how to do combined searches in both posts and meta data. Basically, it involves two queries via the $wpdb object; one to search the meta table to get a list of post_ids and the other is a query of posts to get post_ids. You then merge the arrays and use that to do a query with a WP_Query using the posts__in argument.

    Using tags may be a bit tricky because 1. tags are meant to group posts together and 2. tags and taxonomies involve 3 different tables.

    1) The linked article is not completely right. It should be $keyword = "%".like_escape( $keyword )."%";.

  3. If you are truly opposed to a plugin, and know some SQL, you can do this with the $wpdb global variable.

    For example, to query all posts that contain “sample_text” in the title, you would do something like:

    global $wpdb;    
$post = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->wp_posts WHERE post_title LIKE '%sample_text%' ");

    Then you would do similar things for each of the other tables.