Unable to search by user name

Sorry that you are having troubles.

I’ve been using WP-members for 3 years and there’s always been issues with search. It seems it is designed to search by email and not last name,

The user search is WP’s user search. And yes, it does not search last name (which is a meta field). But it does search more than email.

The WP user search searches by the fields that are in the wp_users table, which is essentially username and user email (and some others, but that’s not necessarily relevant to this). It does not search any user meta fields – which includes some WP default fields like first/last name, and any custom field.

So that’s the reason you’re not able to search by other fields.

That’s not very helpful. Why is it like this (for the plugin – not for WP)?

I guess that’s because it has not come up before. Or at least, when it has come up, there have been other solutions (such as another plugin).

99.9% of the forward development of this plugin over its life (which spans almost 12 years) comes from user feedback and requests from users. Now, there are some feature requests that are ignored because they are either unreasonable, don’t fit into the scope of the plugin, or are too specific to a small universe of users. But this issue is not one of those things. This is one of those requests that I’m actually surprised (1) hasn’t come up before and (2) I didn’t think of addressing earlier.

So we are going to address it right now.

At minimum, the search in the Users > All Users screen should be able to search by username, email address (as it does now), AND first/last name. That’s a minimum level. It really needs to be customizable so that define user meta fields can be searched.

I will add a feature set for this in the next full release (expected to be 3.1.9). In the meantime, I’ve written in an initial framework and tested it out on my own site (rocketgeek.com). This includes search by first & last name fields. Adding in an interface to select searchable fields will take a little more time.

You are welcome to download it and try it out. I’ve loaded it to both the bitbucket and github repos, which are linked below. Currently, there’s nothing in these packages that is different from the current 3.1.8 version other than the addition of the user search.

https://github.com/butlerblog/wp-members
https://bitbucket.org/butlerblog/wp-members

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Chad Butler.

An update to this, I have now added the ability to select which meta fields are searchable. In the Fields tab, I’ve added a checkbox column after the User Screen column (which allows you to display fields in the Users > All Users screen) for User Search. This will allow you to select which user meta fields are searchable in the Users > All Users screen.

This change will be part of the 3.1.9 release and is available in the development version on github and bitbucket:

https://github.com/butlerblog/wp-members
https://bitbucket.org/butlerblog/wp-members

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Chad Butler.

Thanks Chad! You are the best.

No problem! I’m glad we can improve this section of the plugin.

My subscription may have expired about the time expanded search was implemented. I have Version 3.1.9.2 Search does not work for first name or last name. Once a list of fields with checkboxes flawed by on the Users page as the page was loading. Should I be able to get search results from first name and last name fields?

You need to add the fields you want to be included in search by selecting them in the plugin’s Fields tab. For each field you want included, check it in the column “Users Search”. (Username and email are already searchable by default, but any additional fields you want searchable need to be added.)