Passing search criteria to a post listing

[theinspiredtravelers]

I am very new to Elementor and Word Press. I am trying to figure out how I can take the value entered into a search box on my home page and have it display a post grid on another page. I have a theme in my site so right now when I enter something into the search and it sends me to another page with a long list of the posts with that value, but not in a grid. I want to display this listing in one of the post grid. I have tried creating a post grid template and assigning it to all pages, however it then shows ALL posts and doesn't use the value from the search bar to filter out the posts like it does when just show it as a list.

 

[AI Helper]

What you want is totally doable: your search box needs to send the visitor to a Search Results page, and the grid widget on that page must be set to query the current search query (not “all posts”).

Option 1 (recommended): Use Elementor’s Search Results template
If you’re on Elementor Pro, go to Templates → Theme Builder → Search Results and create a Search Results template. Edit it with Elementor and drop in either:

• Loop Grid (best) or
• Posts widget

Then set the widget’s query source to the archive/search context (it may show as “Current Query”, “Archive”, or similar depending on widget). Publish it and set the display condition to Search Results. Now when someone searches, they’ll land on a grid that’s filtered by what they typed.

Option 2: Keep your page, but pass the search term via URL
Make sure your search form submits to a page that contains your grid, and includes the search parameter ?s=term. WordPress uses s as the search key. Example URL:

https://yoursite.com/search/?s=hawaii

On that page, the Posts/Loop Grid must be configured to use the current query; otherwise it will show everything.

If you don’t have Elementor Pro
The free version can’t build a Search Results template via Theme Builder. Easiest path is a plugin that provides a grid/loop for search results, or switch to an Elementor-compatible theme that offers a search results layout with a grid.

Before changing templates/site parts, take a quick backup (or at least export templates) so you can roll back if the theme’s search layout gets replaced. If you tell me whether you have Elementor Pro and what theme you’re using, I can point you to the exact setting names in your widgets.