Scott Reilly

This plugin prevents WordPress from allowing and handling any search requests from the front-end of the site. Specifically, this plugin:
<ul>
<li>Prevents the search form from appearing if the theme uses the standard <code>get_search_form()</code> function to display the search form.</li>
<li>Prevents the search form from appearing if the theme uses a <code>searchform.php</code> template</li>
<li>Prevents the search item from appearing in the admin tool bar when shown on the front-end.</li>
<li>Disables the search widget.
<ul>
<li>Removes the Search widget from the list of available widgets</li>
<li>Deactivates any search widgets currently in use in any sidebars (they are hidden, not deleted; they’ll reappear in their original locations if this plugin gets deactivated)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Disables the search block.
<ul>
<li>Removes the Search block from the list of available blocks</li>
<li>Deactivates any search blocks currently in use, such as in posts or as a widget (they are disabled, not deleted; they’ll reappear if this plugin gets deactivated and the associated placeholder block doesn’t get deleted)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>With or without a search form, the plugin prevents any direct or manual requests by visitors, via either GET or POST requests, from actually returning any search results.</li>
<li>Submitted attempts at a search will be given a 404 File Not Found response, rendered by your site’s 404.php template, if present.</li>
<li>Disables output of <code>SearchAction</code> in SEO schema by the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/" rel="ugc">Yoast SEO</a> plugin.</li>
</ul>
The plugin only affects search on the front-end of the site. It does not disable searching in the admin section of the site.
Links: <a href="https://coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/disable-search/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin Homepage</a> | <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-search/" rel="ugc">Plugin Directory Page</a> | <a href="https://github.com/coffee2code/disable-search/" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a> | <a href="https://coffee2code.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Author Homepage</a>

Disable Search


In 2024, numerous bots are crawling sites, generating significant search spam. Generally, site search incurs high costs, primarily because we end up paying for CPU resources consumed by spam.



If site search is not crucial for your website, I recommend activating this plugin.



Thank you, Scott, for maintaining this simple yet effective plugin!


The most effective way to avoid search spam

Disable the built-in front-end search capabilities of WordPress.

This plugin provides a template tag which acts as a modified version of WordPress’s built-in template tag, <code>the_category()</code>. <code>the_category()</code> lists all categories directly assigned to the specified post. <code>c2c_parentless_categories()</code> lists those categories, except for categories that are parents to other assigned categories.
For example, assume your category structure is hierarchical and looks like this:
<pre><code>Vegetables
|-- Leafy
| |-- Broccoli
| |-- Bok Choy
| |-- Celery
|-- Fruiting
| |-- Bell Pepper
| |-- Cucumber
| |-- Pumpkin
|-- Podded
| |-- Chickpea
| |-- Lentil
| |-- Soybean
</code></pre>
If you directly assigned the categories “Fruiting”, “Cucumber”, and “Pumpkin” to a post, <code>c2c_parentless_categories()</code> would return a list that consists of: “Cucumber”, and “Pumpkin”. Notice that since “Fruiting” was a parent to a directly assigned category, it is not included in the list.
By default, categories are listed as an HTML list. The first argument to the template tag allows you to define a custom separator, e.g. to have a simple comma-separated list of categories: <code><?php c2c_parentless_categories( ',' ); ?></code>.
As with categories listed via <code>the_category()</code>, categories that are listed are presented as links to the respective category’s archive page.
Example usage (based on preceding example):
<ul>
<li><code><?php c2c_parentless_categories(); ?></code></li>
</ul>
Outputs something like:
<pre><code><ul><li><a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/cucumber">Cucumber</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/pumpkin">Pumpkin</a></li></ul>
</code></pre>
<ul>
<li><code><?php c2c_parentless_categories( ',' ); ?></ul></code></li>
</ul>
Outputs something like:
<pre><code><a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/cucumber">Cucumber</a>, <a href="http://yourblog.com/category/fruiting/pumpkin">Pumpkin</a>
</code></pre>
Links: <a href="https://coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/parentless-categories/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin Homepage</a> | <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/parentless-categories/" rel="ugc">Plugin Directory Page</a> | <a href="https://github.com/coffee2code/parentless-categories/" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a> | <a href="https://coffee2code.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Author Homepage</a>
<h3>Developer Documentation</h3>
Developer documentation can be found in <a href="https://github.com/coffee2code/parentless-categories/blob/master/DEVELOPER-DOCS.md" rel="nofollow ugc">DEVELOPER-DOCS.md</a>. That documentation covers the template tags and hooks provided by the plugin.
As an overview, these are the template tags provided by the plugin:
<ul>
<li><code>c2c_parentless_categories()</code> : Outputs the parentless categories.</li>
<li><code>c2c_get_parentless_categories_list()</code> : Returns the list of parentless categories.</li>
<li><code>c2c_get_parentless_categories()</code> : Returns the list of parentless categories for the specified post.</li>
</ul>
These are the hooks provided by the plugin:
<ul>
<li><code>c2c_parentless_categories</code> (action), <code>c2c_get_parentless_categories_list</code>, <code>c2c_get_parentless_categories</code> (filters) : 
Allows for an alternative approach to safely invoke each of the identically named functions in such a way that if the plugin were deactivated or deleted, then your calls to the functions won’t cause errors on your site.</li>
<li><code>c2c_parentless_categories_list</code> (filter) : 
Customizes the return value of the <code>c2c_parentless_categories_list()</code> function.</li>
<li><code>c2c_get_parentless_categories_omit_ancestors</code> (filter) : 
Customizes the function argument indicating if ancestor categories of all directly assigned categories (even if directly assigned themselves) should be omitted from the return list of categories.</li>
</ul>

Parentless Categories

Provides a template tag like the_category() to list categories assigned to a post except those that have a child category also assigned to the post.

Disable Search vs Parentless Categories