Passing url parameters with search form [closed]

Question

I'm trying to let users have a filter option when they submit a search.

My search form:

<form class="searchform" method="get" action="http://www.example.com/">
            <input class="search" name="s" type="text" value="Search Here"/>
            <select name="search_type" id="cat" class="postform" style="display: none; ">
                <option value="all" selected="selected">both</option>
                <option class="level-0" value="filterone">filterone</option>
                <option class="level-0" value="filtertwo">filtertwo</option>
            </select>
            <button value="submit" class="searchBtn"><span class="hidden">Submit</span></button>
</form>

The problem im having is that the optoin paremeters im passing through the url are removed. for example when I go to:

http://www.example.com/?s=apple&search_type=filterone

I am imediatley returned to:

http://www.example.com/?s=apple

Ive tried many different things to make this work, but it still doesn't work:

add_filter('query_vars', 'search_vars' );
function search_vars( $qvars )
{
$qvars[] = 'search_type';
return $qvars;
}
function my_search_filter( $query )
 {
      if( is_search() )
      {
                $query->set( 'search_type', 'schools' );
      }
 }
add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'my_search_filter' );

When I go to any other page besides the home page, the url parameters work fine. Also I am using custom permalinks. I hope this is enough information.

So my question is, how can I stop the parameter variables from being removed?

Answer 1

In the above code on this line

<input class="search" name="s" type="text" value="Search Here"/>

change name of text input from "s" to "s2" or whatever you want so that the page will not redirect to search page and your passed parameters will not remove.

After getting the value of your "search_type" parameter redirect page to search page like this.

if(is_search()){
 wp_redirect( home_url()."?s2=".$_GET['s2'] );
 exit;

}

Answer 2

I have discovered the the wordpress SEO plugin somehow interferes with url parameters. I disabled the plugin and the url parameters seem to stick just fine.

Answer 3

If I'm understanding this correctly, you simply need this inside your <form> tag:

<input type="hidden" name="search_type" value="filterone" />