WordPress › Support » Search function awry

walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

Hey Folks,

I went ahead and tweaked my blog according to this page: w/p is located in the folder 'journal', but the pages are in the root folder so their url is like this:

http://www.skolaiimages.com/wp-page/
but the blog posts use the permalink /journal/date/post/

http://www.skolaiimages.com/journal/date/post.html

Everything seems to work just fine:

http://www.skolaiimages.com/journal/

except the search feature now just takes me to the home page, not any actual search results. Is there something I've done incorrectly? I can't seem to correct this.

Thanks so much in advance.

Cheers

Carl

Christine
Moderator
Posted 5 months ago #

What code are you using for your search function?

I normally use something like this:

<form action="<?php echo home_url(); ?>" id="searchform" method="get">
	<label for="s" class="screen-reader-text">Search for:</label>
    <input type="text" id="s" name="s" value="" />
    <input type="submit" value="Search" id="searchsubmit" />
</form>

walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #
Hey Christine

Thanks for the note and help. Here's what I have in my sidebar:
```
<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>/">
<div><input type="text" value="<?php the_search_query(); ?>" name="s" id="s" />
<input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Search this Journal" />
</div>
</form>
```
The problem appears to be some kind of override between my static home page (index.html) and the wordpress page I uploaded to make the pages work from the root directory (index.php) .. if I drop the index.html page, the search function works correctly. I guess because w/p finds the index.php page. but if I have the index.html page up, then any search form my blog just takes the user to the home page, no search results.

Everything worked just fine until last week when I made some changes, so that I could build pages in w/p that en up in the root directory of the site, while the blog posts still are linked to the journal (i.e., wp) directory via the permalink.

What I need to be able to do is somehow have the search function actually find the index.php file, but I don't know how w/out losing the static html file.

Thanks so much,

Cheers

Carl
Christine
Moderator
Posted 5 months ago #

I don't think that you can have an index.html and index.php in the same directory. I think that you'll need to put your entire WordPress in a separate folder. I would just put it in a folder called journal.
walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

hey Christine

Thanks. I have had the entire w/p section in the 'journal' folder up til last week. it works great for the blog posts. but I don't want the static pages to be at skolaiimages.com/journal/page ... but simply skolaiimages.com/page - so when I started building the static pages in w/p I made the changes above. And it works fine except for the search function. Maybe I need to move my index.html page to 'home.html or something, and then update all my navigation. That way I can have a static page, and the index.php simply be for functionality of the w/p section. Almost all the site is either static html.

I know it's possible to have w/p NOT be in the root directory,
http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page
but have it function as if it were, yet have a static landing page. I just don't know how to incorporate the search function to work correctly.

Thanks so much,

Cheers

Carl
Christine
Moderator
Posted 5 months ago #

Sorry, I thought that your index.html was a separate html page. Is your home page, a page in WordPress? If so then it's index.php and there is no index.html. If your site is entirely made of wordPress pages and posts, then there are NO index.html pages anywhere, it's all php.

Yes you can have a static page not be your blog. That's how my site is set up.. so perhaps your search function is simply just not right. Have you tried the code I use?
walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

hey Christine

It's hard to explain, I have a few threads on this topic, and they're all related.

No, my home page is a static page I've had for years, index.html

however, in order to run w/p off the root directory, like I am trying, I had to upload index.php to the root directory as well. That means I have both files, .html and .php, in the root directory.

yes, I tried your search form; it's the same thing. The problem is not the search function, as it was working just fine.

The problem is trying to run w/p from the root directory, w/ a separate static html page as the home page of the website, and having that page be index.html .. as I said above, if I remove the index.html page from my root directory, everything works just fine .... I don't want to change it to home.html, or even index.php, if I can help it, it would mean a lot of navigation updating and losing a lot of history on the search engines for my home page.

up until last week, only the blog posts were run from w/p everything else is either static pages or the albums are driven by coppermine gallery. I decided to add some new w/p pages as well.

Thanks for your continued patience and help.

Cheers

Carl
Christine
Moderator
Posted 5 months ago #

Do you have a search template in your theme? Perhaps having one of those would help, but I'm not even sure. I don't think that having an index.html and index.php in the root is possible and changing index.html, I don't think will help either.

I'm running out of ideas, sorry....
walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #
hello Christine

Yes, the search function works perfectly when I don't have the index.html file in the root folder. As soon as I rename that file to say index-bak.html, it all works fine .. except of course, all my links to my home page (i.e., index.html) are dead.

The problem is having a static page called index.html in the root directory.

What is your static home page called? Is it the index.php file?

Yes, my theme has a search function, and it works fine until i tried to run wordpress from the root directory.

In the code, whether I use yours or mine,
```
<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>/">
<div><input type="text" value="<?php the_search_query(); ?>" name="s" id="s" />
<input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Search this Journal" />
</div>
</form>
```
doesn't <?php bloginfo('home'); ?> point to the home page? Which, w/ my w/p setup, is pointing to the root directory and has no file name .. if I can point it to the index.php file inside the w/p directory (journal) then I think it would work. But I don't know how to do that.

Thanks so much

Cheers

Carl
Christine
Moderator
Posted 5 months ago #

Hi Carl,
The search function is different from the search template. WordPress themes use templates, index.php, archive.php, page. php..... etc ....

There's one called search.php and it will display search results.

Here's more info about templates - http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy

In the WordPress hierarchy, WordPress will look for search.php and if there is no file, it will then use index.php. So I'm guessing you don't have one and that's why it's trying to use your index.php and it's conflict with your index.html.

As I said earlier, mixing WordPress and html in the same directory is NOT a good idea. I do NOT have any html pages. All my pages are created using WordPress.
walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

Hey Christine

Thanks.

Yes, my theme has a search function; it's worked perfectly for years. This search thing only went awry when I changed the directory structure to move how w/p functions, from the 'journal' folder, to the root directory.

And it still works, when I remove the index.html file from the root directory. Or, if I point, via Settings/reading the front page to the 'journal' directory. I don't want to do that if I build Pages in w/p, because I don't want their url to be skolaiimages.com/journal/Page .. it doesn't make any sense to have them in a directory called 'journal' or 'blog' or anything if they're regular pages, not Blog posts.

I'm curious now; you said earlier you "Yes you can have a static page not be your blog. That's how my site is set up.." ... how can you have a static page if you do NOT have any html pages? All wordpress pages are dynamic.

I uploaded both the search.php and the searchform.php files to my root directory, but it still doesn't work.

What's frustrating is there's gotta be some easy remedy to this, without undoing everything.

Thanks

Cheers

Carl
Christine
Moderator
Posted 5 months ago #

The search.php does not go in the root directory it goes in the theme directory..
Ipstenu
Half-Elf Support Rogue & Mod
Posted 5 months ago #

Static front page - http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page

Carl, please don't sign your posts, by the way :) We can see who you are by looking at your pretty gravatar and handle :)
Eric Mann
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

@walkinman - Actually, nothing's wrong.

When a web browser requests your site (http://www.skolaiimages.com/), your webserver tries to deliver a default page back to the browser. The problem you're facing is that you have two default pages - index.php and index.html.

The .html page is your old school static home page. The .php page is the core initializer for WordPress.

In other words, when you remove or rename index.html, your webserver directs all traffic to http://www.skolaiimages.com/ into WordPress and lets WP take care of it. When you restore your index.html page, the webserver ignores WordPress entirely and just returns the static file.

Your search function

Your search form is attempting to post to WordPress - Specifically, the action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?> line is trying to send the search request to http://www.skolaiimages.com/. But when the index.html file is present in the root of your system, WordPress never sees the request.

That is why the search doesn't seem to be working.

Fixing the problem

The second issue you're facing is a slight misunderstanding of what WordPress means by a "static front page."

WordPress can deliver traffic to the root of your site - traffic to http://www.skolaiimages.com/ - to a page rendered by WordPress. You cannot use a static .html page for this. All traffic to the root of your site must go through WordPress to work correctly.

So I recommend setting up a Page in WordPress (just like you would any other post or page) and calling it something along the lines of "Home." Then follow the steps outlined in the "Creating a Static Front Page" article you've already seen to set it as the homepage for your site. Then remove index.html from the root of your site.
walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

Hey Folks,

Christine - I'm aware of that. I put it in the root directory because you said perhaps "I don't have one" which is clearly not the case. It has worked fine for many years now. It only stopped working when I tried to make some changes with where w/p drives from, which the folks above have now talked about.

@ipstenu - are you serious? putting a name to my post is a problem? I sign it, because it seems a polite thing to do. The same way I say "thank you" when someone helps out. I'm amazed this is somehow a problem. No offense meant to anyone, but that's just weird. I'm curious what's the reasoning behind a request NOT to sign my name?

Also, if you read the thread, I posted that same link in the OP of this thread. That's how I got in this mess. :)

@Eric Mann

Thank you - that's definitely what's going on, I was just hoping there would be some workaround, without having to rename my html page or use the w/p as a landing page. I can change my current index.html to home.html, and repoint all my navigation to that page, and then the w/p index.php will serve as little more than a functionality tool to drive w/p; as well as a landing page when someone simply visits skolaiimages.com (as opposed, say, to skolaiimages.com/home.html). Is that correct?

I remember reading, somewhere, about the w/p use of "static front page" - they mean a virtual static page. Because I'm using a combination of .html files and the w/p platform, I call the .html files static pages, because they're intrinsically different, and separate from, the w/p pages.

Anyway .. does anyone know if this (below) will cause any problems? Here's what I did:

Under Settlings/General I just switched the site address (URL) to http://www.skolaiimages.com/index.php

what I had was http://www.skolaiimages.com/

which drove everything to the default index.html page. Now, it seems to work fine; when I search, the results are ok, and the url is http://www.skolaiimages.com/index.php/?s=elk

which is weird, I know .. and all the links, like categories, etc, go to http://www.skolaiimages.com/index.php/journal/category/alaska/

but then default to

http://www.skolaiimages.com/journal/category/alaska/

which is correct. They all show up just fine, but I don't know if this will cause any other array of problems as yet undiscovered.

so its seems to actually "work" - but probably should NOT work. :)

So maybe until I can fix the home page, or design the 'virtual static page' in w/p to match my current home page, and redo all my navigation (they all point to skolaiimages.com/index.html) this is kind of a workaround?

My other hesitation to change things too much is the page rank of an older home page (index.html) suddenly going away w/ a new page .. though I don't know how much this will change things in reality.

Thanks again, I appreciate your patience.

Cheers

no-name :)
zoonini
help me help you
Posted 5 months ago #

From the forum etiquette FAQ:

"Signatures in threads will be removed as they cause clutter and distract from the information and help provided"

http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome#Signatures

Nothing sinister. ;-)
walkinman
Member
Posted 5 months ago #

Hey zoonini

I looked that up after I posted; I understood, and still understand, that use of 'signature' to be in reference to a quote or bio line etc that people often tack on under their name on the web.

The idea that the word 'carl' under a post is either cluttering or distracting to the post doesn't seem to hold water. Signing off as

Carl
may all the world live as one

is a different matter.

IMO, of course. I could well be completely incorrect.

Cheers

C

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