Pure Blog includes built-in full-text search capability for your blog posts without requiring external search services or complex databases.

How Search Works

When visitors use the search form, Pure Blog queries an optimised index containing:

  • Post and page titles
  • Post and page descriptions
  • Post tags
  • Post and page content excerpts

By default, Pure Blog indexes both published blog posts and published pages managed within the CMS.

Search indexes Markdown posts and pages managed in Pure Blog. Custom routes and custom PHP includes (such as custom archives or external PHP files) are not indexed.

Search Configuration

Under Settings → Site Settings, you can configure search indexing behaviour:

  • Search excerpt length – The number of characters indexed per post or page (default: 2500). Higher values improve search precision for long articles and pages, while slightly increasing memory usage and index size. Set this value to 0 to index the full content without truncation.
  • Include pages in search results – By default, published pages are indexed alongside blog posts. Uncheck this option if you want search queries to match blog posts only.

The Search Page

By default, Pure Blog designates the page with the slug search (accessible at /search) as the search page.

If you wish to use a different URL for search:

  1. Navigate to Settings → Site Settings in the admin dashboard.
  2. Scroll to the Search Page setting.
  3. Select any of your existing pages from the dropdown list.

Adding Content to the Search Page

You can edit your search page just like any other static page in Content → Pages.

Any Markdown content, headings, introductory text, or images added to your search page will be rendered directly above the search input form and search results. This is useful for:

  • Providing search tips or instructions
  • Adding a welcome message or site index guidance
  • Including helpful links to popular tags or archives

Special Page Badges in Admin

To make it easy to see which pages are serving special dynamic roles on your site, the Pages list in the admin area displays distinct badges alongside each page’s status:

  • Home page – The page configured as your site homepage.
  • Blog page – The page configured to display your blog feed.
  • Search page – The page configured to handle site searches.

Read more in the Special pages guide.