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.

Reduce permalinks (category or post) that include entire hierarchy of categories to just having the lowest category in the hierarchy.
By default, WordPress replaces the %category% permalink tag in a custom permalink structure with the entire hierarchy of categories for the post’s first matching category. For example, assuming your site has a hierarchical category structure like so:
<pre><code>Applications
 |_ Desktop
 |_ Web
 |_ WordPress
</code></pre>
By default, if you have a permalink structure defined as <code>%category%/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%</code>, your post titled “Best Plugins” assigned to the “WordPress” category would have a permalink of:
<pre><code>https://www.example.com/applications/web/wordpress/2008/01/15/best-plugins
</code></pre>
If you activate the Single Category Permalink plugin, this would be the permalink generated for the post (and recognized by the blog):
<pre><code>https://www.example.com/wordpress/2008/01/15/best-plugins
</code></pre>
In order for a category to be used as part of a post’s permalink structure, <code>%category%</code> must be explicitly defined in the Settings -> Permalinks admin page as part of a custom structure, i.e. <code>/%category%/%postname%</code>.
For category links, <code>%category%</code> is implied to follow the value set as the “Category base” (or the default category base if none is specified). So if your category base is ‘category’, the above example would list posts in the ‘WordPress’ category on this category listing page:
<pre><code>https://www.example.com/category/applications/web/wordpress/
</code></pre>
With this plugin activated, that link would become:
<pre><code>https://www.example.com/category/wordpress/
</code></pre>
NOTE: The fully hierarchical category and post permalinks will continue to work. The plugin issues a 302 redirect to browsers and search engines pointing them to the shorter URL.
Links: <a href="https://coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/single-category-permalink/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin Homepage</a> | <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/single-category-permalink/" rel="ugc">Plugin Directory Page</a> | <a href="https://github.com/coffee2code/single-category-permalink/" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a> | <a href="https://coffee2code.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Author Homepage</a>
<h3>Hooks</h3>
The plugin exposes one filter for hooking. Code using this filter should ideally be put into a mu-plugin or site-specific plugin (which is beyond the scope of this readme to explain). Less ideally, you could put them in your active theme’s functions.php file.
c2c_single_category_redirect_status (filter)
The ‘c2c_single_category_redirect_status’ hook allows you to specify an HTTP status code used for the redirect. By default this is 302.
Arguments:
<ul>
<li>$status (integer) : The default HTTP status code</li>
</ul>
Example:
<pre><code>/**
 * Change the redirection HTTP status to a 302.
 *
 * @param int $code The HTTP status code. By default 301.
 * @return int
 */
function scp_change_redirect_status( $code ) {
 return 302;
}
add_filter( 'c2c_single_category_redirect_status', 'scp_change_redirect_status' );
</code></pre>

Single Category Permalink

Reduce permalinks (category or post) that include entire hierarchy of categories to just having the lowest level category.

Disable Search vs Single Category Permalink