“CactusThemes - Advanced Search Form” Documentation by “CactusThemes.com” v1.3

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“CactusThemes - Advance Search Form” v1.3

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Table of Contents

1. What it does
2. Installation
3. Configuration
4. Theme Overrides
5. Change logs

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A) What it does - top

Advance Search Form (ASF) widget is an upgrade of the Wordpress's simple search widget. The ASF widget adds these following features:

• Search all posts and custom post types
• Search in specific categories only
• "Filter search results by categories and tags" ability for visitors
• "Order search results" ability for visitor
• Highlight results
• Search suggestion/Ajax search
• Insert search form anywhere using shortcode
• Fully configurable

B) Installation - top

Unzip the package, you will find the installation file at [\Installation File\advance-search-form.zip]. To install, go to

Plugins --> Add New --> Upload

Browse to the installation file and click [Install Now]

Figure 3. Where to install Advance search Form plugin

Now in the search result page (usually search.php file), add this line of code to display the search filter panel.

<?php do_shortcode('[advance-search]');?>

C) Configuration - top

In Admin, go to ASF Settings page

1. Post Types to search:Choose what kind of post types to search. If unchecked all, Search will perform on all post types
2. Search in categories:Check the categories you allow to search in, or leave unchecked all if you allow to search in all categories
3. Label:The label that will go before the search textbox (using [advance-search] shortcode). Leave empty if you don't want to use label
4. Button Text:Text on the search button (using [advance-search] shortcode). Leave empty if you don't want to display search button
5. Placeholder Text in Textbox:Default text in the search textbox (using [advance-search] shortcode). Leave empty if you don't want to use default text
6. Show category list:Display the category combobox in the filter panel so that visitors can filter the search result by categories
7. Show tags filter:Display list of available tags in the filter panel so that visitors can filter the search result by tags
8. Highlight results:Highlight search result by wrapping similar words in the search results by a tag
9. Ajax Search suggestion:Enable ajax search while users are typing
10. Maximum Ajax Results:Maximum number of results returned by an ajax search
11. Load default CSS:Load pre-defined CSS file for the search filter panel.
12. Custom Words
    

    Added since v1.1, the Search Suggestion feature allows the plugin to do an Ajax search while user is typing in the textbox. Returned list contains:

    • Title of posts and custom posts
    • Title of categories
    • Tags
    • Custom words

    Enter each word per line

13. Custom CSS: If you have custom CSS to apply for search form, enter it here

To use Widget, In Admin, go to Appearance > Widgets, drag the Advance Search Form widget to appropriate position.

Appearance --> Widgets

A screenshot of Advance Search Form widget can be seen in Figure 2 above. Options available are:

1. Title:Title of the widget
2. Label:The label that will go before the search textbox. Leave empty if you don't want to use label
3. Default Text:Default text in the search textbox. Leave empty if you don't want to use default text
4. Button Text:Text on the search button. Leave empty if you don't want to display search button
5. Show category list:Display the category combobox in the filter panel so that visitors can filter the search result by categories
6. Load default CSS:Load pre-defined CSS file for the search filter panel.
7. Search suggestion: Allow performing an ajax search while users are typing

E) Theme Overrides - top

If you are theme developer or you know some code, you can override View template (HTML) of ASF widget and shortcode. Just copy every files in /advance-search-form/views/ and put it in [your theme]/widget-views/ folder (create new if not exists). Feel free to edit the view.

F) Change Logs - top

05.11.2013 (v1.3)


		#Add: View template. Now theme can override View (HTML) of ASF widget & shortcode
		#Update: Add more options. Now search form shortcode can be configured without using widget
		#Improve: Search URL & Ajax Search
		#Fix: some minor bugs
		

09.03.2013 (v1.1)


		#Add: ajax search/search suggestion

24.2.2013 (v1.0.1)


		#Fix: a CSS update for tags
		#Fix: remove HTML entities in select box

20.2.2013 (v1.0)

First release

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