On a blog with a few hundred posts, a plain search box makes the visitor do all the work. A category dropdown beside it lets them say what kind of thing they are looking for first.
The Search Bar block builds that dropdown from your real categories, counts included.
For every Search Bar setting in one place, see the Search Bar guide.
Before You Start
- Edition: Free. Measured with Nexter Blocks Pro deactivated, the Search Bar renders identically — form, input, dropdowns, suggestions and results all work without Pro.
- Block to enable: Search Bar, switched on under Nexter > Blocks in your WordPress dashboard.
- Posts assigned to categories. The dropdown is built from your category terms, so uncategorised posts give it nothing to show.
Steps
- Select your Search Bar block and add a filter field.
- Set the field source to taxonomy and choose Category.
- Publish and pick a category, then search.
How It Behaves
- The dropdown is built from your live category list. Measured on a site with six categories, the dropdown rendered 7 options — one per category plus the All entry.
- Choosing a category adds a taxonomy condition to the query. Measured: one category returned exactly its 2 posts out of 14.
- Sub-categories can be shown indented under their parent, with a leading dash, so the hierarchy is readable in a flat dropdown.
- The All entry searches every category. It is the default selection.
- Only the title is searched by default. Measured: with the default settings a term matched 4 posts by title; switching the search fields off entirely fell through to WordPress’s own query and matched 15.
- It degrades to an ordinary search. The block renders a real
<form method="get">pointing at your site root, so with JavaScript disabled the bar still submits and lands on WordPress’s own search results.
Limitations
- Only top-level categories are listed unless you enable sub-categories. The dropdown queries parent terms by default.
- Sub-category indenting only applies to the built-in category taxonomy. A custom taxonomy renders flat.
- Empty categories still appear. The list is not filtered by whether a term has posts, so a category with nothing in it shows up and returns nothing.
- One category at a time. The dropdown is a single choice, not a multi-select.
Troubleshooting
The dropdown is empty
The field source has to be set to taxonomy and a taxonomy chosen. With the source set but no taxonomy selected, the dropdown does not render at all.
My sub-categories are missing
Turn the sub-category option on. Without it only parent terms are listed.
A category with posts returns nothing
Check which fields the search is matching. The category narrows the set, but the typed term still has to match a field, and by default that is the title only.
