You didn’t say whether these Custom Fields are on one page or post. Or on many.
If they are all on one page or post, you can use the Search capability on most current web browsers, when positioned on the page or post in question on WP Admin’s Edit Page.
I just tested this on IE8, and it works very well.
Otherwise, I’d be looking at some sort of OpenSource MySQL database query user interface that includes security so only Admins can sign on.
I use DaDaBIK to update the separate MySQL database that I access from WordPress, and I see that it has a Search facility, though I’ve never used it. Set up properly, I know that DaDaBIK can access the WordPress MySQL database. dadabik.org
Each post has its own custom field for this data.
If I search in wp-admin in the “Edit Posts” field, it doesn’t find these posts based on it, which leads me to believe that search only looks at post_content, and not metadata.
I haven’t tried it, but a quick search for plug-ins turned up one that seems to address your needs: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-custom-fields-search/ There may well be others, so a more thorough search might be worth your effort.
Admittedly, this lets everyone, not just Admins, search Custom Fields, and not from wp-admin panels. But it is probably a more integrated solution than DaDaBIK.
I tried that one, it’s not what I’m after.
I don’t want people on the site itself searching for these fields. I just want to be able to identify posts from the Admin panel to find data that needs updating.
It doesn’t seem like this should that hard of a task to accomplish, but it’s turning out that it is.
Been looking for this capability whether in the admin section or just a function I can add to a template.
Yes, I’m looking for the ability to do this from admin too.
So what is it you want to be able to do? …have the search text check against meta data aswell as the title/content?
I was feeling adventurous, so i wrote a simple plugin to do it..
http://wordpress.pastebin.ca/1736605
The post search in the admin will now also check against the meta keys and meta values when checking for matching posts… 😉
You are awesome! Works perfectly.
Hi,
I’ve been searching (almost) everywhere to find how to hack the sidebar search field to search my custom field and your solution seems to be good but would it be possible to apply it to the theme ?
I resume : Can i use the search field in my sidebar to search wysiwyg content AND custom fields too ?
Thanks for your help 🙂
my website is http://www.micromix.fr
it is a theme I made, and if you look in the PLAYLIST you have each ‘artist – title’ as a custom field value. And I’d like to search an artist and it returns the post(s).
PS: Sorry for my english :p
t31os_, giving your plugin a spin, but unfortunately it’s triggering a fatal error (the error is not being specified, sadly) on activation. I’ve tried disabling all of my plugins, and it still does it, so it’s not a conflict. I’m using WordPress v2.9.1.
Any ideas? I’d love to get this going on my install.
I use DaDaBIK to update the separate MySQL database that I access from WordPress, and I see that it has a Search facility, though I’ve never used it. Set up properly, I know that DaDaBIK can access the WordPress MySQL database.
Ian
(@ianaleksander)
awesome – I was looking for the same thing and pasting the plugin above (by t31os_) into my theme functions (after one soul shaking false start, haha) worked perfectly for me.
The “search everything” plugin previously recommended didn’t help at all, actually made it worse.
Ian
(@ianaleksander)
hmm, well I thought it was working and then it sort of… stopped. I’m not really sure what’s going on with this? sometimes it seems to find all the results I want, and then sometimes it just doesn’t find anything!
