Dec
10
2008
Getting Text in your WordPress Search Box
Have you ever wondered how some sites have text in their search box? This one is pretty easy. All you need to do is modify the searchform.php file, which can be found in your theme’s directory. Let’s use the default theme as an example to make it easier for everyone to see what to do.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | <form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/"> <label class="hidden" for="s"><?php _e('Search for:'); ?></label> <div> <input type="text" value="<?php the_search_query(); ?>" name="s" id="s" /> <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="Search" /> </div> </form> |
Now let’s change…
4 | <input type="text" value="<?php the_search_query(); ?>" name="s" id="s" /> |
to…
4 | <input type="text" value="Search & Hit Enter" name="s" id="s" onfocus="if (this.value == 'Search & Hit Enter') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Search & Hit Enter';}" /> |
What does all this do? Oh… So very much.
First, it will automatically fill your search box with “Search and Hit Enter”. If you click on the search box, it will disappear and you can enter text. But if you don’t enter text and click out of the box, “Search and Hit Enter” will appear again.
Thank you, it works for me to put Search & Enter into my search field. I did this on 3 blogs after reading your instructions.
Thanks so much for sharing. Saved me a couple of minutes.
i cannot get this to work. here is the php code for my website… where would i put this?
<div id="post-” class=”">
<a href="” title=”" rel=”bookmark”>
<?php printf(__('Posted by %s on ', 'sandbox'), 'ID, $authordata->user_nicename).’” title=”‘ . sprintf(__(‘View all posts by %s’, ‘sandbox’), $authordata->display_name) . ‘”>’.get_the_author().’‘) ?><abbr class="published" title="”>
<?php wp_link_pages("\t\t\t\t\t”.__(‘Pages: ‘, ‘sandbox’), “\n”, ‘number’); ?>
<?php next_posts_link(__('« Older posts’, ‘sandbox’)) ?>
<?php previous_posts_link(__('Newer posts »’, ‘sandbox’)) ?>
<form id="noresults-searchform" method="get" action="”>
<input id="noresults-s" name="s" type="text" value="” size=”40″ />
<input id="noresults-searchsubmit" name="searchsubmit" type="submit" value="” />
<div id="post-” class=”">
<a href="” title=”" rel=”bookmark”>
<?php printf(__('Posted by %s on ', 'sandbox'), 'ID, $authordata->user_nicename).’” title=”‘ . sprintf(__(‘View all posts by %s’, ‘sandbox’), $authordata->display_name) . ‘”>’.get_the_author().’‘) ?><abbr class="published" title="”>
<?php wp_link_pages("\t\t\t\t\t”.__(‘Pages: ‘, ‘sandbox’), “\n”, ‘number’); ?>
<?php next_posts_link(__('« Older posts’, ‘sandbox’)) ?>
<?php previous_posts_link(__('Newer posts »’, ‘sandbox’)) ?>
<form id="noresults-searchform" method="get" action="”>
<input id="noresults-s" name="s" type="text" value="” size=”40″ />
<input id="noresults-searchsubmit" name="searchsubmit" type="submit" value="” />
how about for Password box? pls help me T_T im new to html designing..
hi sir.
i want to put a search form in my homepage example in home. i will put inside of page the search form to search a certain topic or anything.
and not in widget search. pls help thanks..
Thank you sooooo much
Thank you! It works
Sorry to ask for more but is it possible to change the color just for the default value?
No need to rummaged through the functions.php and even general-template.php anymore! Might help to add a note that even if someone is working off a custom theme (i.e. their theme doesn’t already contain a searchform.php), that this would work just as well
thanks on ur post i had alot of usfeul infromation from it
I am really having hard time with y search box..grrrrrr
Thanks a lot.This is what i am searching for…
Awesome, it works! I made several attempts to get the text in search box before, but coudln’t get quite to work. Good thing I save the original code.