Removing ‘Search For’ text from search box

Try looking in your searchform.php.

Weird, I can’t find this file anywhere. Which directory should it be in please?

It seems my theme doesn’t have a searchform.php…. I’ve searched the Web and it seems other themes are missing this form too

Try:

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>">
<div>
<label for="s">Keyword(s)</label> <input class="text" type="text" value="<?php if(trim(wp_specialchars($s,1))!='') echo trim(wp_specialchars($s,1));else echo ' ';?>" name="s" id="s" />
<input type="submit" class="submit" name="Submit" value="Search!" />
</div>
</form>

Save the above as searchform.php within your theme’s folder.

If you want to hide the input’s label, add:

#searchform label {
	position:absolute;
	top:-1500px;
	left:-1500px;
}

to your theme’s stylesheet.

Thank you so much Esmi. That worked a treat!

You can remove the “Search for:” text by editing (WP version 2.8) wp-includes\general-template.php

Line 125
<div><label class="screen-reader-text" for="s">' . __('<!--Search for:-->') . '</label>

I commented it out (as seen above) so it wouldn’t show. Hope that helps.

Better to hide the text using CSS such as:

label.screen-reader-text {
display: none;
}

or like esmi’s code. Otherwise you risk needing to edit the php file again whenever you update WP.

What if I would like to edit the text instead of removing it?