Tutorials

Overview Video

Basic Installation After Download

  1. Upload & Activate Search Engine Theme
  2. Upload & Activate Socrates Toolkit Plugin
  3. Upload & Activate Link Directory Plugin
  4. Goto Appearance > Customize to adjust layout and basic colors.

 

The Home Page Template

Make a new page template called home and assign the Full Width template to it.

Paste this code and you can replace the popular searches links with  your own.  There’s probably a plugin that will generate these links as well.

[bigsearch]


<strong>Popular Searches:  <a href="https://searchenginetheme.com/?s=amazon">Amazon Product</a> - <a href="https://searchenginetheme.com/?s=test">Test</a></strong>

<hr />

Then in Settings > Reading make this new page your Front Page.

To get the big search bar on all pages/posts add the shortcodes below to the “Top Banner Widget”.

It will display on every page or you can use a widget visibility plugin to display it where you want. You can “Hide From Front Page” in visibility too.

[soc_full_section bgcolor="#fff" textcolor="#444" margin_top="0" margin_bottom="0" margin_left="0" margin_right="0" padding_top="15" padding_bottom="15" padding_left="0" padding_right="0"][bigsearch][/soc_full_section]

The Custom Fields

There are two custom fields that are generated by the Link Directory plugin which work with the theme.

Don’t see the custom fields boxes?

If you’re using Classic Editor go to Screen Options at the top of the post editor. Click it to open then check the custom fields box.  If you’re using Gutenberg click the 3 vertical dots in upper right, corner, then click Options, then check the box under Advanced Panels).

They are not required to use the theme but are VERY IMPORTANT if you want to make this theme have unique display and outbound links.  So these custom fields are hard coded into our template.

Those two field names are:

affurl –  This is your affiliate or tracking link to an outside url.
dataurl – This is the display url for the search results and the thumbnail generator.

Look at our search demo links to learn more about these.

If you want to remove the thumbnail or visit links you can either remove the custom fields or use the “hide elements” box.

Screenshot of custom field setup with affurl and dataurl

 

The Link Directory Plugin

This plugin allows you to import 100’s of website bookmarks into your Search Engine in just a few minutes.

It takes a bookmark HTML file and creates a post for each URL using the title and description.    The Bookmark “category” becomes the WordPress category as well.   It’s pretty cool.

You can also edit your bookmark HTML exports and make your own custom html import files as long as you stick to this format.  So say you want to create a search engine of the Top 100 Shopping Sites.

You’d list them in a Text Editor EXACTLY like this. You can create multiple categories as well and they will be imported as new categories.

Save it, and upload.  And within 2 minutes you’ll have a search engine with 100 posts.

<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<DL><DT><H3>Category Name</H3>
<DT><A HREF="https://www.google.com/">Google</A>
<DT><A HREF="https://amazon.com">Amazon</A>
<DT><A HREF="https://youtube.com">YouTube</A>
</DL>

You can also use the Press This plugin and our “Add Link” functionality to add a bookmark bar that lets you add new sites to your search engine in just a couple of clicks.

Thumbshots

I’ve added an option to disable URL Thumbshots in the Post Editor Per post..   Just click “Hide Thumbshot” in Post editor on right side.  (redownload zip if you downloaded 4/6/22 and don’t see it)

However, this does not disable thumbshots on the index or listing pages.

If you want to disable thumbshots for your URLs completely add this to custom css

.thumbshot-listing {display:none;}

Customize the Visit Site Link.

You can customize the Visit Site text now in the Appearance > Customize > Other (might need to redownload zip if you got before April 8th).

If you want to make it into a button add this code to the Additional CSS box and adjust to your liking. I also put sample code to underline the link if you wish.

.visit-link a {
    display: inline-block;
    font-size: inherit;
    font-weight: 400;
    color: #fff;
    background: #4082c6;
    line-height: 40px;
    padding: 0 15px;
    margin-bottom: 15px;
    border-radius: 2px;
}
.visit-link a {text-decoration:underline}

Footer Disclaimer

I’ve added some Disclaimer CSS so you can easily create a disclaimer near the footer using out Bottom Banner Widget.  Just add this shortcode and text to a Custom HTML widget block in Bottom Banner location. Then you can edit the disclaimer class in Additional CSS if you need to.

[soc_element tag="div" class="disclaimer"]<b>Disclosure:</b> This site may contain affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.[/soc_element]

 

Recommended Plugins

  • External Links – Make all outbound links open in a new window.
  • Search Meter – Simple plugin that gives you search stats and shows you all the searches on your site and a Recent Searches Widget
  • WPFreshTraffic – This is our plugin in WPUnite members area which gives search stats and more
  • Live WordPress Search –  Will show search results as they type.
  • Press This – Lets you add new posts/content via bookmark bar shortlink.
Best Theme Design Tip Ever

If you want to know how to change a design element of a website, right click on that element and click “Inspect”.  You’ll then see the CSS code that controls that element and you can modify it live.  Once you see the change you want to make, add that code to the Simple CSS editor.

Disclosure: This site may contain affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.