Disable Search

Description

This plugin prevents WordPress from allowing and handling any search requests from the front-end of the site. Specifically, this plugin:

• Prevents the search form from appearing if the theme uses the standard get_search_form() function to display the search form.
• Prevents the search form from appearing if the theme uses a searchform.php template
• Prevents the search item from appearing in the admin tool bar when shown on the front-end.
• Disables the search widget.
  • Removes the Search widget from the list of available widgets
  • Deactivates any search widgets currently in use in any sidebars (they are hidden, not deleted; they’ll reappear in their original locations if this plugin gets deactivated)
• Disables the search block.
  • Removes the Search block from the list of available blocks
  • Deactivates any search blocks currently in use, such as in posts or as a widget (they are disabled, not deleted; they’ll reappear if this plugin gets deactivated and the associated placeholder block doesn’t get deleted)
• With or without a search form, the plugin prevents any direct or manual requests by visitors, via either GET or POST requests, from actually returning any search results.
• Submitted attempts at a search will be given a 404 File Not Found response, rendered by your site’s 404.php template, if present.
• Disables output of SearchAction in SEO schema by the Yoast SEO plugin.

The plugin only affects search on the front-end of the site. It does not disable searching in the admin section of the site.

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

Installation

1. Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or install the plugin code inside the plugins directory for your site (typically /wp-content/plugins/).
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress

FAQ

Will this disable the search capabilities in the admin section of the blog?

No.

Will this prevent Google and other search engines from searching my site?

No. This only disables WordPress’s capabilities with regards to search.

Search engines index your site and search their index of your site. They do not make use of your site’s native search capabilities. You can only prevent search engines from searching your site by blocking their web crawlers and purging their cache of your site (which is well beyond the scope of this plugin).

Why do I still see a search form on my site despite having activated this plugin?

The most likely cause for this is a theme that has the markup for the search form hardcoded into one or more of the theme’s template files (excluding searchform.php). This is generally frowned upon nowadays (the theme should be calling get_search_form() or using searchform.php to get the search form). There is no way for this plugin to prevent this hardcoded form from being displayed.

However, even if this is the case, the form won’t work (thanks to this plugin), but it will still be displayed.

Can the front-end search only be selectively disabled, allowing it to appear and work under certain conditions (such as only for logged-in users, etc)?

No, not at this time, though it is feature being considered. (In truth, custom coding could certainly be used to achieve this, but that obviously requires coding knowledge.)

Is this plugin GDPR-compliant?

Yes. This plugin does not collect, store, or disseminate any information from any users or site visitors.

Does this plugin include unit tests?

Yes. The tests are not packaged in the release .zip file or included in plugins.svn.www.remarpro.com, but can be found in the plugin’s GitHub repository.

Reviews

Magnificent little plugin

awesiome October 28, 2024

Does exactly what it says. Just activate and it completely disables all default WordPress search functionality from the frontend.

The most effective way to avoid search spam

Takahashi Fumiki May 1, 2024

In 2024, numerous bots are crawling sites, generating significant search spam. Generally, site search incurs high costs, primarily because we end up paying for CPU resources consumed by spam. If site search is not crucial for your website, I recommend activating this plugin. Thank you, Scott, for maintaining this simple yet effective plugin!

Handful

Dennis February 9, 2022

Simple and Very Handful

Easy to Use! Works Flawlessly!

aliakey7 January 2, 2022

Love this plugin! Really didn’t want a search bar on my site and this took care of the problem. I have used this plugin for about a year with no hiccups at all. Thank you for developing it!

Great one

gerlofdelange September 17, 2021

I was looking for hours to hide the search form in the theme I am using. This plugin worked in 2 clicks: install and activate Really great!!

Best in addition to Google Custom Search

shirtguy72 April 13, 2020

Great plugin! Thanks for allowing search functions to remain for Admin Backend!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2.1 (2024-08-08)

• Change: Remove the admin bar search field with a higher priority than what it was changed to in WP 6.6.
• Change: Check if core/search block is registered before attempting to unregister. Props toru.
• Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.6+
• Change: Update copyright date (2024)
• Change: Remove development and testing-related files from release packaging
• Unit tests:
  • Hardening: Prevent direct web access to bootstrap.php
  • Fix: Define functions now expected by the bundled theme being used
• New: Add some potential TODO items

2.0.1 (2023-09-02)

• Change: Safeguard JS from throwing error if WP JS isn’t loaded (should be rare to never)
• Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.3+
• Change: Update copyright date (2023)
• Change: Tweak code alignment
• New: Add .gitignore file
• Unit tests:
  • Fix: Allow tests to run against current versions of WordPress
  • New: Add composer.json for PHPUnit Polyfill dependency
  • Change: Prevent PHP warnings due to missing core-related generated files

2.0 (2021-09-13)

Highlights:

• This release finally addresses disabling the search block, notes compatibility through WP 5.8+, and restructures unit test directories.

Details:

• New: Disable the search block
  • New: Add disable_core_search_block() to unregister block via PHP
  • New: Add enqueue_block_editor_assets() to register JS script to unregister search block via JS
  • New: Add JS script file to unregister search block
  • Change: Update documentation to reflect search block being disabled
• Change: Remove get_search_form() and simply use __return_empty_string() as callback to 'get_search_form' filter
• Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.8+
• Change: Tweak installation instruction
• Unit tests:
  • Change: Restructure unit test directories
    • Change: Move phpunit/ into tests/
    • Change: Move phpunit/bin into tests/
  • Change: Remove ‘test-‘ prefix from unit test file
  • Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin file constant
  • Change: In bootstrap, add backcompat for PHPUnit pre-v6.0

Full changelog is available in CHANGELOG.md.