WordPress Tutorial Videos by WP101®

175+ WordPress tutorial videos for non-techies.

How to Search By Category in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

So, you’ve spent a lot of time carefully organizing your content into categories?

Bad news: the built-in WordPress search bar completely ignores categories. 

This can be disastrous for the user experience. Imagine someone searching for ‘Protein Powder’ on your fitness blog because they want a specific product review. Instead of seeing your ‘Reviews’ category, they get a cluttered list of every workout and recipe post that happens to mention protein.

Most visitors won’t stick around to hunt for the right link. They’ll simply leave your site and look for answers elsewhere.

Adding a category filter to your search bar completely changes that experience. It gives your audience a shortcut to the content they actually care about.

Whether you’re running a membership site, a busy blog, or an online shop, this small change helps visitors find what they need faster. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to quickly add ‘Search by Category’ to your WordPress site, without writing a single line of code.

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Make Custom Fields Searchable in WordPress (No Code Needed)

Your WordPress search bar is lying to your visitors. 

They type in a keyword, the content exists on your site, but WordPress says “Nothing Found.” Why? 

When I first started working with WordPress, I dealt with this exact problem for months before I finally figured out what was happening. It turned out, the information visitors were searching for was stored in custom fields. 

I’d created some of those fields manually, but many others were created automatically by the plugins I’d installed (that means you could be using multiple custom fields on your site right now, without your knowledge). 

And WordPress doesn’t include custom field data in its search results. 

Once I understood the problem, the fix turned out to be surprisingly straightforward, and it had a massive impact on my site’s user experience.  

In this guide, I’m going to walk you through an easy, code-free way to make every custom field searchable. By the end of this tutorial, your visitors will finally be able to find exactly what they’re looking for, every time. 

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How to Add A Search Bar in WordPress (Free Method)

Do you want to learn how to add a search bar anywhere on your WordPress site?

You can add a search bar to any page, post, or sidebar. You can even add it to your website’s header or footer section.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to easily create a search engine for your site, customize it to your needs, and then add it to your site with ease.

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7 Best WordPress Search Plugins for Easy Site Navigation

If you’ve been using WordPress for a while, you’re probably all too familiar with its basic built-in search function. Let’s be honest – it’s pretty bare-bones, right? It works, sure, but it’s not exactly winning any awards for user experience or functionality.

As website owners, we’ve all felt that frustration. We want more control over how search looks, how results are displayed, and just… well, more oomph overall.

This is where WordPress search plugins come in, filling in all those gaps left by the default search.

At WP101, we’ve used a number of search plugins and we’ve also helped our users set up the search feature on their sites.

Plus, the team is always knee-deep in research mode scouring the WordPress world for new tools and plugins, how to improve websites, and how to make running a site much easier.

After all this collaborative research and real-world testing, I’ve distilled our findings into this guide. We’ve covered everything from simple, light-as-a-feather plugins to the heavyweight champs that pack every feature under the sun.

In this guide, I’ll give you the lowdown on the best WordPress search plugins out there. For each one, you’ll get:

  1. Our honest, no-holds-barred opinion based on our hands-on experience
  2. The standout features that made us go “Wow!”
  3. Who it’s perfect for (whether you’re running a cozy blog or a massive e-commerce empire)
    Starting prices, including some wallet-friendly free options
  4. We’ve done all the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. We’ve considered everything from how easy they are to set up, to how fast they are, to whether they play nice with different themes and content types.

So, whether you’re looking to give your search a little facelift or a complete overhaul, stick around. I’m about to detail how these search plugins can give your WordPress site the search functionality you’ve been dreaming of – way beyond what WordPress offers out of the box.

Let’s dive in!

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