Skip to main content

The results page

Search results drawn by the catalogue template: what was searched in the heading, the filters and the grid

See all results — and Enter in the dialog — lead to WooCommerce's search results, /?s=hoodie&post_type=product. There is no template to build for that page: it uses your product archive, the same one as /shop/ and your categories, with its filters, its bar and its grid. Improve the catalogue and search results follow.

All it needs is a heading that says what was searched. In the catalogue's header:

1. A condition on url.parameter.s, with the search heading inside. Etch fills {url.parameter.s} with what was typed, so the title can read Search results for “{url.parameter.s}”.

2. The headings you already have — the category's and the shop's — inside a second condition, !url.parameter.s. With the !, which is how Etch writes «not»: without this one, a search shows its heading and the shop's.

A search sent empty is still a search to WordPress; the second condition gives it the shop's heading.

What comes with it, with nothing to set up:

  • The breadcrumb reads Home / Shop / Search results for “hoodie”.
  • The catalog bar says when nothing matched — and, with Rescue empty searches on, that it showed «hoodie» because nothing matched «hodie». The heading keeps what was typed.
  • The filters count what the search found, not the whole shop.
One result opens the product

When a search leaves exactly one product — filters included — WooCommerce goes straight to that product's page. That is WooCommerce's own behaviour: add_filter( 'woocommerce_redirect_single_search_result', '__return_false' ); keeps shoppers on the results.

Already have a search page of your own?

A product-search-results template the site changed still wins over the catalogue: a template the site made beats a stock one. Stock means WooCommerce's own page — and also the untouched copy of it that Etch saves to the database whenever its builder opens, which is why that copy does not count. The same goes for /color/blue/: WooCommerce's attribute page only wins if somebody changed it.

For developers: which post types' searches and taxonomy archives use their archive is the fancy_etch/templates/archive_types filter — WooCommerce adds product. Return an empty list to leave the template choice to WordPress and WooCommerce.

Your searches still use WooCommerce's page​

You built the catalogue, you never touched the search template, and the results page is still not yours. That happens when the saved product-search-results is no longer WooCommerce's untouched page: a WooCommerce update, a visit to Appearance → Editor, or opening that page in Etch — which saves what it finds — all leave a copy that counts as the site's. And you cannot delete it: WordPress does not delete a template a plugin registers.

The Search & Catalogue card of the settings, with the Search results use the catalogue switch off

Turn on Search results use the catalogue, in Fancy Etch → Shop → Search & Catalogue. With it on, product searches are drawn by archive-product whatever else is in front of it, and nothing else changes — /color/blue/ and the rest of the rules stay as they are. Leave it off if you do design that search page yourself.

For developers, the same switch is fancy_etch/woo/search_uses_catalog, and for any other post type fancy_etch/templates/force_archive:

add_filter(
	'fancy_etch/templates/force_archive',
	static fn( $forced, $type ) => 'recipe' === $type ? true : $forced,
	10,
	2
);