By default, the WordPress backend search searches for post titles and the post content. If you have a lot of pages, it can be hard to find the correct page when you want to link pages or insert pages to a menu.
If you want to change that, so that WordPress only searches for the post title (in the backend), you can use this code snippet:
if ( is_admin() ) {
add_filter( 'posts_search', 'search_by_title_only', 500, 2 );
}
/**
* @param $search
* @param $wp_query
*
* @return string
*/
public function search_by_title_only( $search, $wp_query ) {
// $wp_query was a reference
global $wpdb;
if ( empty( $search ) ) {
return $search;
} // skip processing - no search term in query
$q = $wp_query->query_vars;
$n = ! empty( $q['exact'] ) ? '' : '%';
$search =
$searchand = '';
foreach ( (array) $q['search_terms'] as $term ) {
$term = esc_sql( $wpdb->esc_like( $term ) );
$search .= "{$searchand}($wpdb->posts.post_title LIKE '{$n}{$term}{$n}')";
$searchand = ' AND ';
}
if ( ! empty( $search ) ) {
$search = " AND ({$search}) ";
if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
$search .= " AND ($wpdb->posts.post_password = '') ";
}
}
return $search;
}