Searching Across Network

  • I can’t seem to find the answer to my question, so apologies, if this has been answered elsewhere.

    I have multi-site set up for approximately 5 related sites. I have two questions:

    1. Is there a way to create a search bar that will search all of the sites within the network. Currently, the basic WordPress Search Widget will only search which ever site it happens to be in. I want it so if I were on “site a” couldn’t find what I was looking for, searched and results would appear from “site b.”

    2. There is a constant header on all five sites, is there a way to only have one header.php file for all sites within a network?

    If more information is required, I will be happy to supply it. Thank you in advance.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • 1. No good plugins are out there yet to do just that. Some are kludgy or workarounds, or part of something else.

    2. No. the site are siloed.

    Depending on what you want, there may or may not be a plugin to have something across the top that *looks* like a common header.

    Thread Starter Anthony D'Arco

    (@adarco)

    Thank you for such a quick response, do you know if there is plan for a plugin that will search all of the Networks? It seems to me that would be a very useful plugin, but that maybe just because I need it.

    I am allso working on a wp multi site portal/intranet and am really interensted in a multi site search plugin if someone with better php skills than me is up to it.

    Honestly? No, I have no idea of anyone is planning one as it’s a pile of work. in the past for MU, a couple of attempts were made but they were also resource draining.

    Embedding a google search works, especially if your site uses subfolders.

    And anything else is like I said above – kludgy and kinda works.

    Thread Starter Anthony D'Arco

    (@adarco)

    For anyone who is curious, what I ultimately did was:

    1. Create a custom Google site search (not Ideal, but it works).
    2. To create the same heading accross all the domains I did the follow:
    • I created a folder within my theme directory “brand-file”
    • Within that folder I put all the files that will be universally used by my sub-sites and added a prefix so it was something like “brand-header, brand-footer, brand-css, etc.
    • Then I just copied that folder into all of the themes that required the branding folder.
    • This allowed me to make a universally add a php call to those files.
    • So now if there are any edits to the branding I make the change in my original brand folder, and then copy the change accross the other folder, upload, and you’re done.

    Obviously that is far from perfect, but since there isn’t a lot of change to the branding, it works fairly well because there are only about 7 sites. I could see this really being cumbersome with 50 sites (so lets hope this company doesn’t because that big).

    I am really curious if someone has come up with a better solution.

    Thank you,
    Anthony

    Thread Starter Anthony D'Arco

    (@adarco)

    Of course I have one last thought. It seems to me that this would also be a great function to share things like photos or videos between sites without having to re-load them several times. Anyway, if anyone is interested in my results the link to the site is:
    https://oldstpats.org
    and
    https://oldstpats.org/faith-formation

    Thank you again,
    Anthony

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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