The Extensive search features is an important functionality in Directory themes. The user will try to search for different scenario as per his needs. So we need to think it as per user’s perspective here.
Directory Search Features
The search features are made available by the Directory search widgets. We have two powerful widgets for this, “T-Instant Search” and “T-Advanced Search”.
Instant Search
With the instant search widget you have the option to select the post type. Once you select the post type it will show you the categories, tags, and different custom fields. So you can select that option and apply the filter in the search results. In instant search if you search some keyword it will show you the suggestion instantly as a drop-down list.
Suppose if you select the “Listing” post type and select the category option it will give results from the listings and listing categories. It will apply the filter from widget settings.
If you enable the “Search with exact match conditions” it will give you results with the exact match. And if you enable the “Search from current city” option it will fetch the results from the current city only. By enabling this option it will apply current city filter to your search results.
Advanced Search
In advanced search widget you have the option to select the post type. Once you select the post type it will show you the custom fields in widget settings. By selecting one custom field it will create that custom field in a search form. So a user will search the results according to that custom fields.
Here we have added three custom fields like category, address, and city.
Use
Suppose a user lands on a site with in-numerous listings. It gets tiresome for him to go through various sections of the site and search for the relevant result. Sometimes even the category results will be so long that he would have to go through pages of results in order to find his desired result.
For this we have the search box, so instead of getting confused by going through all the listings, he can directly enter the keywords he has in his mind to get the search result. He can even use the Advanced search option to clarify his criterias and get streamlined results.