don benjamin

This plugin provides an admin interface allowing you to build powerful search forms for your wordpress site.
With this you can give your readers the ability to search and filter your posts / catalogue to quickly find the information they need. Any custom fields you have added to your posts can be made searchable as well as the core post fields like title, author, categories etc. Configurable input widgets allow you to customise the form further to build exactly the search you need for your site.
You can configure a number of inputs of different types, to search different fields of your posts in different ways. These will then be presented to your users as a simple form interface allowing them to find the content they need.
<h4>Add a sidebar widget</h4>
<ol>
<li>Navigate to the widgets page in your wordpress admin area ( Appearance > Widgets )</li>
<li>In the available widgets list you should see “WPCFS Custom Search Form”, drag this into the appropriate sidebar.</li>
<li>Add at least one field (see ‘Configuring your form’ below)</li>
<li>click save on the new widget.</li>
<li>Navigate to the front-end of your site</li>
</ol>
You should now see a very basic search form in that sidebar. You can expand on this using the instructions below under configuring your form
<h4>Include a preset</h4>
<ol>
<li>Navigate the WP Custom Fields Search section in the menu</li>
<li>Click the “New Preset” button</li>
<li>Add at least one field (see ‘Configuring your form’ below)</li>
<li>Either copy the shortcode text into a post / page</li>
<li>Or copy the php code into your template</li>
<li>Navigate to the front-end of your site</li>
</ol>
You should now see a very basic search form in that sidebar. You can expand on this using the instructions below under configuring your form
<h4>Configuring your form</h4>
** Adding Fields **
Each form consists of a list of fields.
Click the “Add Field” button to add a new field to the list. You will be prompted to select a number of options which will control the appearance and behaviour of your new field. The different settings are described below, but a basic search form could be built from a single field with the following options:
<ul>
<li>What should this field be called? “Search Term”</li>
<li>How would you like this field to appear? “Text Input”</li>
<li>What do you want to search? “Core Post Field”, and “All”</li>
<li>How do you want to match the search to the data? “Contains Text”</li>
</ul>
Once you have configured your field close the popup with the X in the top-right corner.
You can add as many fields as you want, and re-order the fields by dragging them up and down the list. You can delete them by clicking the little X icon in the list, and you can reconfigure them by clicking the edit / cog icon in the list.
** Global Settings **
You can name each search form using the text input at the top of the edit form. This name can be displayed to your site visitors (if you click the cog icon to it’s right and tick the option “Show Title?”) or it can be helpful if you have a number of forms and need to keep track of which is which.
<h4>Input Types / How would you like this field to appear?</h4>
The input type controls the form that the user sees when they visit your site to perform a search and how they provide you with a search term. The search term may be something they’ve typed or it might be a selection they’ve made from options you provide.
** Text Input **
A simple text field which allows your visitor to type a free text search query.
This can be powerful when paired with the “Contains Text” comparison as it will match any posts where the configured field contains the visitor’s search term.
By default text inputs treat their input as a single string so if a user types multiple words, they will need to appear in exactly that order. This behaviour can be changed in the input settings options. Click the cog next to the input type selector and you will see the text input settings popup. Choose “Split Words?” to search for each word separately. So e.g. a search for “Big Jumper” might match a post with the text “Big Red Jumper” or “Jumper and Big Socks”. The ‘Matches If’ option controls if the resulting posts must contain all the search words, or just any one of them.
** Drop Down **
This creates a html select element or drop-down menu. This is useful where the user must select from a known list of search terms, e.g. searching by category.
For certain datatypes the options for a dropdown can be automatically populated. This works for e.g. author or category, where there is a set list of items. This is the default behaviour for dropdown items. The first item in the list is always a placeholder in case the user doesn’t want to search on this field, by default this shows as “Any”.
If you need to customise this list you can in the input settings popup (click the cog icon to the right of the input type selector.)
If you just want to change the text of the placeholder item at the top of the list, you can set this with the “Blank Prompt” option.
** Configuring options in a list **
To configure which options are shown in the list, you will need to switch the data source from “Auto” to “Manual”. YOu can now configure the list of options for the dropdown.
Each item has a value and a label. The label is what will be displayed to the user, the value is what will actually be searched in the database, this is helpful if you want to format e.g. numbers differently for the user to how they are stored in the database, or if you want to show different labels entirely to the end user.
Items can be added and removed using the relevant buttons.
** Checkboxes **
These are displayed as a list of checkbox inputs which the user can tick or not.
The options which are displayed are configured in the same way as for dropdowns (See “Configuring options in a list” above)
Because it’s possible to select multiple checkboxes at once, you may want to show posts which match all the selections, or those which only match some of them. This can be configured in the settings popup, by selecting “Any” or “All” for the “Matches If” parameter.
** Radio Buttons **
These are displayed as a list of radio button inputs from which the user can select only a single item.
The options which are displayed are configured in the same way as for dropdowns (See “Configuring options in a list” above)
** Hidden Constant **
This option is not displayed to the user at all, but always searches for a fixed value in the database.
This is useful if you want this search form to always search through only particular posts. E.g. if you want to search a particular post type, you could use a hidden constant on the field “Post Type”. You can set the term which is searched in the settings popup, in the Post Type example you would want this set to the name of one of the post types in your installation, e.g. post or page or a custom post type.
<h4>Data Types</h4>
Data types control which fields in the database are searched on when a search term is provided for each field.
** Core Post Field **
This searches on the standard properties associated with a post or page in a standard wordpress install. e.g. you can select to search the Title, Author, Date, Content, Excerpt, Post Type or ID.
There is also an all option which will search on all of the title, content and author fields.
** Custom Post Field **
This allows searching on any of the custom fields you have set up for your posts. This includes all the custom fields you have manually added as well as those added by the wordpress core, and any plugins which use the custom field functionality.
This can allow powerful ‘catalogue’ style search in that you can add any properties you would like to your posts and then filter based on these values.
** Category Field **
This allows you to search based on what category a post is in. If you have multiple categories with the same name it’s recommended to use the ID search in order to separate them, however if you want to attach this to e.g. a text input, you will probably want to use the name search, otherwise the user will have to type the ID number for the category they watn.
** Tag Field **
Essentially the same as the category field but operates on tags rather than categories.
<h4>Comparison Types</h4>
How do you want to match the search to the data?
These control the rules used to match the post field against the search term to decide which posts to display to the user.
** Exact Match **
The search term has to exactly match the data field.
** Contains Text **
This will match if the search term is anywhere in the data field, so e.g. “Best Post” would find posts with the value “This is the Best Post”, or “How to write the best Post” or simply “Best Post”.
** Greater Than **
This will return any posts for which the field is considered greater than the search term, so a search term of 200 would match a post with a greater value, e.g. 300.
**= Numeric or Alphabetic Search? **=
Comparing things by order is tricky as what would be first alphabetically is not always the same as what would be first numerically. e.g. if you sort alphabetically then 20 comes before 3, because comparison is done digit by digit and the first digit is lower.
As such if your field contains numerical data you will want to open the settings dialog (using the cog icon) then select Numeric from the first drop down.
Also when comparing ordering of items, it’s important to know whether to include exact matches, e.g 200 is not greater than 200 so should posts with that value be shown for searches which exactly match? This can be controlled by selecting Inclusive (yes they should) or Exclusive (no they shouldn’t) in the settings popup.
** Less Than **
Shows all posts which have a value less than the search term. (See “Numeric or Alphabetic search” above for notes on ordered searches)
** In Range **
This requires two values and will return posts which fall between the two values. The search term has to be of the form “a:b” where a is the lower limit and b is the upper limit. So e.g. a search term of 100:200 would return posts with values between 100 and 200. You will probably want to use this with manually configured drop downs or checkboxes to avoid your users having to format these search terms themselves. Either term can be left blank to mean unlimited eg “:100” would show posts with a field less than 100.
See “Numeric or Alphabetic search” above for notes on ordered searches.
** In category or sub category **
This is a special comparison which requires a category name or id for the search term and will match any post which is either in that category or is in a sub-category.

WP Custom Fields Search

Build search forms to provide custom search functionality allowing search of built in post fields, custom fields via a variety of different inputs and …

Tran Ngoc Tuan Anh

eLightUp

Meta Box

Franz Josef Kaiser

Tan Nguyen

FitWP

Per Wiklander

ruanmer

Manny Fleurmond

<h3>WordPress custom fields plugin</h3>
<a href="https://metabox.io" rel="nofollow ugc">Meta Box</a> is a professional framework that makes building and customizing a website with dynamic data and content in WordPress fun and easy.
Meta Box helps you add <a href="https://metabox.io/series/custom-fields/" rel="nofollow ugc">custom fields</a> and dynamic data to posts, pages, custom post types, forms and anywhere you want using over 40+ different field types such as text, images, file upload, checkboxes, and more.
On top of that, each WordPress custom field type has extensive internal options for unlimited content possibilities. Complete customization and control is just a few clicks away.
<blockquote>
Meta Box Lite 
 We recommend using <a href="https://metabox.io/lite/" rel="nofollow ugc">Meta Box Lite</a>, a feature-rich free UI version of Meta Box that provides UI and all free features for managing custom fields and dynamic content on WordPress, including post types, taxonomies, custom fields, and relationships.
</blockquote>
<h3>Create any type of custom fields in WordPress</h3>
That’s right – any type. No matter where you need to insert custom data and features, Meta Box’s WordPress custom fields have your back, and with infinite options to boot.
Here are just a few of the data types you can customize:
<ul>
<li>Posts</li>
<li>Pages</li>
<li>Custom post types (you can also use our free plugin <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/custom-post-type/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Custom Post Types & Custom Taxonomies</a> to create custom post types and custom taxonomies)</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-term-meta/" rel="nofollow ugc">Taxonomies</a></li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-settings-page/" rel="nofollow ugc">Settings pages or Customizer sections</a></li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-user-profile/" rel="nofollow ugc">User profile pages</a></li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-comment-meta/" rel="nofollow ugc">Post comments</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>A wide-range of field types and options</h3>
Take your standard WordPress custom field and imagine it infinitely expanded. That’s how many options Meta Box gives you:
<ul>
<li>Meta Box supports <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/fields/" rel="nofollow ugc">40+ built-in WordPress custom field types</a> for all your needs including text, textarea, WYSIWYG editor, image, file, post, select, checkbox, radio buttons, date/time picker, taxonomy, user, oembed and more to come.</li>
<li>Not enough? You can also <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/custom-field-type/" rel="nofollow ugc">effortlessly create your own field type</a>.</li>
<li>Meta Box supports cloning fields for most field types including the WYSIWYG editor field. It also supports <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-group/" rel="nofollow ugc">repeatable field groups</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>It’s developer-friendly</h3>
As a developer, you have enough on your plate. You shouldn’t have to create an entirely new system for each project. Use Meta Box to your full advantage.
You can use Meta Box and its custom fields for any custom post type in WordPress on as many websites as you want so you can use it on client projects as well.
<ul>
<li>Has an ultra-lightweight, yet powerful API that won’t overload your site.</li>
<li>Add only what you need instead of getting stuck with a bundle of features you don’t even want that bloat your site.</li>
<li>Meta Box <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/integration/" rel="nofollow ugc">easily integrates with any theme and plugin</a>, and supports Composer!</li>
<li>We use the <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/database/" rel="nofollow ugc">native WordPress meta data storage</a> and functions for ease of use and lightning-fast processing.</li>
<li>Has a lot of <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/category/actions/" rel="nofollow ugc">actions</a> and <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/category/filters/" rel="nofollow ugc">filters</a> so you can build or change a site’s appearance and behavior in the plugin.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Don’t love coding? You’re in luck!</h3>
If you prefer a more visual system to create custom fields in WordPress, please use <a href="https://metabox.io/lite/" rel="nofollow ugc">Meta Box Lite</a>, a feature-rich free UI version of Meta Box that provides:
<ul>
<li>All the power of Meta Box without touching a single line of code.</li>
<li>Designer-friendly, lightweight and work at top-notch speeds.</li>
<li>Export your custom fields and settings to PHP. Then, add it to a new site without needing to install this extension for an incredibly lightweight option.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Free Extensions</h3>
<ul>
<li>Migrations from <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-acf-migration/" rel="nofollow ugc">ACF</a> or <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-toolset-migration/" rel="nofollow ugc">Toolset</a>.</li>
<li>Integrations with all page builder plugins like <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-elementor-integrator/" rel="nofollow ugc">Elementor</a>, <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-beaver-themer-integrator/" rel="nofollow ugc">Beaver Builder</a>, Divi, Bricks, Brizy, etc.</li>
<li>Integrations with SEO plugins like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/meta-box-yoast-seo/" rel="ugc">Yoast SEO</a>, <a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-rank-math/" rel="nofollow ugc">Rank Math</a>, or Slim SEO.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-builder/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Builder</a>: Create custom meta boxes and custom fields in WordPress using a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-comment-meta/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Comment Meta</a>: Add WordPress custom fields to comments in WordPress.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/custom-post-type/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Custom Post Types & Custom Taxonomies</a>: Create and manage custom post types and taxonomies with UI.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/mb-relationships/" rel="ugc">MB Relationships</a>: Create as many connections as you want from post-to-post or page-to-page.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-rest-api/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Rest API</a>: Pull all meta values from posts and terms into the WP REST API responses.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-facetwp-integrator/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB FacetWP Integrator</a>: Integrates Meta Box and FacetWP to make custom fields searchable and filterable.</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/meta-box-text-limiter/" rel="ugc">MB Text Limiter</a>: Limit the number of characters or words entered for text and textarea fields.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Premium Extensions</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-admin-columns/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Admin Columns</a>: Display WordPress custom fields in table columns in admin.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-blocks/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Blocks</a>: Create custom Gutenberg blocks with PHP, using the same syntax in Meta Box.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-columns/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Columns</a>: Display eye-catching custom fields in WordPress by putting them into 12-column grids.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-conditional-logic/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Conditional Logic</a>: Add visibility dependency for custom meta boxes and custom fields in WordPress.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-custom-table/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Custom Table</a>: Save custom fields to custom tables instead of the default meta tables to reduce your database’s size and increase its performance.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-frontend-submission/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Frontend Submission</a>: Create frontend forms for users to submit posts.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-geolocation/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Geolocation</a>: Automatically and instantly populate location data with the power of the Google Maps Geolocation API.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-group/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Group</a>: Create repeatable groups for better appearance and structure.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-include-exclude/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Include Exclude</a>: Show or hide meta boxes by ID, page template, taxonomy, or custom function.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-revision/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Revision</a>: Track changes to custom fields in WordPress with revisions. You can compare and restore the changes smoothly.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-settings-page/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Settings Page</a>: Create settings pages for themes, plugins or websites with beautiful syntax.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-show-hide-javascript/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Show Hide</a>: Toggle meta boxes by page template, post format, taxonomy and category.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-tabs/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Tabs</a>: Painlessly create tabs for meta boxes with multiple styles and icons.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-template/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Template</a>: Make defining custom meta boxes and WordPress custom fields way easier with templates.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-term-meta/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Term Meta</a>: Add custom fields to categories, tags or custom taxonomies.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/meta-box-tooltip/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Tooltip</a>: Display help information for custom fields with tooltips.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-user-meta/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB User Meta</a>: Add custom fields to users.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-user-profile/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB User Profile</a>: Build login, register and edit profile forms for users.</li>
<li><a href="https://metabox.io/plugins/mb-views/" rel="nofollow ugc">MB Views</a>: Outputting custom fields and build front-end templates for WordPress without touching theme files.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Detailed Documentation</h3>
We provide regularly updated, and extensive <a href="https://docs.metabox.io" rel="nofollow ugc">documentation</a> as well as <a href="https://docs.metabox.io/tutorials/" rel="nofollow ugc">tutorials</a> on how to use MetaBox and custom fields in WordPress to your advantage as well as in the most efficient way possible.
Here are a few guides to quickly get you started with Meta Box and creating your own WordPress custom fields:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://docs.metabox.io/introduction/" rel="nofollow ugc">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.metabox.io/custom-post-types/" rel="nofollow ugc">Custom post types</a></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.metabox.io/custom-fields/" rel="nofollow ugc">Custom fields</a></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.metabox.io/field-settings/" rel="nofollow ugc">Field settings</a></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.metabox.io/displaying-fields-with-code/" rel="nofollow ugc">Displaying fields</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>You might also like</h3>
If you like this plugin, you might also like our other WordPress products:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wpslimseo.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Slim SEO</a> – A fast, lightweight and full-featured SEO plugin for WordPress with minimal configuration.</li>
<li><a href="https://wpfalcon.pro" rel="nofollow ugc">Falcon</a> – A lightweight companion for making WordPress faster, cleaner, and more secure.</li>
<li><a href="https://gretathemes.com" rel="nofollow ugc">GretaThemes</a> – Free and premium WordPress themes that clean, simple and just work.</li>
<li><a href="https://wpautolistings.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Auto Listings</a> – A car sale and dealership plugin for WordPress.</li>
</ul>

Easy to Use

Compared to the competition, the design and extensibility of this plugin is significantly better.  Its performance is better and it doesn't suffer from code bloat.  Its learning curve is a bit steep, however that is what really sets it apart from the others.  The support team is pretty responsive with tickets and the documentation is pretty good! I'll be using the pro version of plugin going forward for custom setups.

Cheers~

Excellent Product and Support

Meta Box plugin is a powerful, professional developer toolkit to create custom meta boxes and custom fields for your custom post types in WordPress.

WP Custom Fields Search vs Meta Box