Search

Search is WordPress’s own: the field submits, and the results page answers at ?s=. Fern shapes what that page looks like and what it covers.

The results page

The results page opens with the term you searched for and a count — We found 4 results for your search — and repeats the search field underneath, so a search can be narrowed without going back.

Each result is a row: the featured image if the post has one, the title, and an excerpt. The words you searched for are highlighted, in the title and in the excerpt, so a long list of similar headings is scannable.

Results always show an excerpt, even on a blog set to Full content under Blog and posts — a results page of whole posts is not a results page. Turning Display post text off there does take the excerpt off the results as well, leaving them a list of titles.

Exclude pages from search results

Customize → Misc → Exclude pages from search results, on by default. Search returns posts only, leaving out pages such as About or Contact. On a blog that is usually what the reader wants; on a site with real content sitting in pages, turn it off.

A search deliberately narrowed to pages by a ?post_type=page in the URL still returns them — excluding what was explicitly asked for would read as a broken form rather than as a preference.

This setting shapes this site’s own search only. It has no effect on Google or any other external search engine; for that you want a noindex, which is a plugin’s job.

A search page

There is no search page template and none is needed. If you want somewhere to link to, make an ordinary page and put the core Search block in it — a footer menu is the natural home for it.

No live search

Fern does not suggest results under the field as you type. It ships no front-end JavaScript of its own, which is most of why a page is as light as it is.