WordPress.org

After the standard manual or automatic plugin installation procedure, you'll be able to access the plugin admin page BuddyPress -> Profile Search.

Configuration

In the plugin admin page you have the following options:

• Specify the HTML text for the form header and welcome message.

• Enable the toggle form feature.

• Select the profile fields to include in the search form (currently the datebox profile fields are not supported);

• If your extended profiles include a birth date field, enable the Age Range search, so your visitors can specify the minimum and maximum age for their search.

• Select the members list to filter, if your Members Directory page contains more than one.

• Select the search mode for text fields, between partial match, where a search for John matches field values of John, Johnson, Long John Silver, and so on, and exact match, where a search for John matches the field value John only.

In both search modes the wildcard characters % (percent sign), matching zero or more characters, and _ (underscore), matching exactly one character, are available to your visitors to better specify their search.

Displaying the search form

There are three different ways to integrate your BP Profile Search form in your BuddyPress site. You can insert the form:

• In a post or page, using the shortcode [bp_profile_search_form]

• In a sidebar or widget area, using the BP Profile Search widget

• In your template files, e.g. in your Members Directory page, using the code
  <?php do_action ('bp_profile_search_form'); ?>

Shortcodes and widgets are standard WordPress features, so I won't explain their usage here. Adding the search form in your template files is also very simple, as shown in the following example.

Example

If you wish to add the search form to your Members Directory page, and you are using the BuddyPress default theme, open index.php in the buddypress/bp-themes/bp-default/members folder, locate this line:

</div><!-- #members-dir-search -->

and, right after that, insert the BP Profile Search form:

<?php do_action ('bp_profile_search_form'); ?>

If you are not using the BuddyPress default theme, the procedure might be different.