What if you want to change the layout of the search results in WordPress (WP)? The very first thing you will do is ‘search’ for a solution using Google! The Search results produced by google allow you to quickly identify which ‘content’ will give you an answer. This is, after all, what google is good for. But not on this occasion. Google fails to display results with answers. Finding a solution to change your themes default search results page is impossible!

The solutions that google spits out are helpful if you are a developer. Most of the solutions guide you to make changes to your child theme (obviously you have to know how to install a child theme) by adding functions to the functions.php file. Some theme builder engines have more flexibility such as Avada but Avada is clunky and slows your WP site down dramatically. Other themes such as Astra make no attempt to provide a solution that doesn’t make massive assumptions for example the solutions take for granted you are a developer! Or very familiar with the Astra Pro theme custom templates. But here lies the problem. Astra Pro does not have a solution using the custom theme builder. It does not replace the default search results layout. Finding out exactly which code is responsible for spitting out the deafult pile of crap search results layout in WP is mission impossible. Is it the archive blog post layout ? What code do you use to over-ride this and where do you put the code.

Why is it so difficult to change the default search results page after so much emphasis on selling a theme based on awesome design features ignore something so important. Or is onsite search results just not considered important ?