How to exclude wordpress page template(custom template) from search results?

I created custom page template.


<?php
/*
* Template Name: foo
*/
?>

This file name is "foo.php".

I tried

global $query_string;
query_posts($query_string . "&post_type=post");

But all pages will be excepted....

How to exclude only this page template from wordpress search results?

Try this:

global $wp_query;
$args = array_merge($wp_query->query, array(
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'foo.php',
'compare' => '!='
)
),
));
query_posts( $args );

Thanks Nikolay! For some reason last night I just was not getting this to work but today, after another hour or two, I did. It may have simply been the fact that I was using the wrong filter or was missing the last line of your code.

In my case I wanted to exclude content based upon multiple templates, so, added more key/value/compare array elements. I also only wanted to do this during a search, so, added a conditional clause for that. Here's the complete function I added to my theme's functions.php file:

// exclude any content from search results that use specific page templates
function exclude_page_templates_from_search($query) {

global $wp_the_query;

if ( ($wp_the_query === $query) && (is_search()) && ( ! is_admin()) ) {

$args = array_merge($wp_the_query->query, array(
'meta_query' => array(
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'page-template-1.php',
'compare' => '!='
),
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'page-template-2.php',
'compare' => '!='
),
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'page-template-3.php',
'compare' => '!='
)
),
));

query_posts( $args );

}

}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','exclude_page_templates_from_search');

For anyone whom stumbles on this thread and doesn't succeed on WP newer versions: the $query args must be set instead redoing query_posts... as the follows:

// exclude any content from search results that use specific page templates
function exclude_page_templates_from_search($query) {

global $wp_the_query;
if ( ($wp_the_query === $query) && (is_search()) && ( ! is_admin()) ) {

$query->set(
'meta_query',
array(
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'page-template-1.php',
'compare' => '!='
)
)
);
}

}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','exclude_page_templates_from_search');

The query mentioned [by Nicolay][1] is very handy, but it also removes all posts from the search results, because posts do not contain the `'_wp_page_template'` key. To have all pages (sans the filtered template) as well as all posts you need to do the following:

// exclude any content from search results that use specific page templates
function exclude_page_templates_from_search($query) {
global $wp_the_query;
if ( ($wp_the_query === $query) && (is_search()) && ( ! is_admin()) ) {
$meta_query =
array(
// set OR, default is AND
'relation' => 'OR',
// remove pages with foo.php template from results
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'foo.php',
'compare' => '!='
),
// show all entries that do not have a key '_wp_page_template'
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'page-thanks.php',
'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
)
);
$query->set('meta_query', $meta_query);
}
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','exclude_page_templates_from_search');

Extensive info on this can be found [in the WordPress Codex][2].


[1]:

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[2]:

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I had to exclude more than one page template, so I had to adapt the above code a little bit, but in the end, this worked for me:

function exclude_page_templates_from_search($query) {
global $wp_the_query;
if ( ($wp_the_query === $query) && (is_search()) && ( ! is_admin()) ) {
$meta_query =
array(
// set OR, default is AND
'relation' => 'OR',
// remove pages with foo.php template from results
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => array('page-landings-new.php', 'page-landings-EU.php', 'page-thankyou.php'),
'compare' => 'NOT IN'
),
// show all entries that do not have a key '_wp_page_template'
array(
'key' => '_wp_page_template',
'value' => 'page-thanks.php',
'compare' => 'NOT EXISTS'
)
);
$query->set('meta_query', $meta_query);
}
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','exclude_page_templates_from_search');

Maybe it is useful to somebody out there.