Forums search button takes you to documentation

[jasmussen]

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Steps to reproduce:

• Go to https://wordpress.org/support/forums/
• Without typing a search prompt, just click the search button

Result: you are taken to https://wordpress.org/documentation/.

I would expect you to be taken to the search page.

[ryelle]

The issue is a series of redirects— the search tries to submit to https://wordpress.org/support/?s=, but without a search string it redirects to https://wordpress.org/support/, which by design redirects to https://wordpress.org/documentation.

Technically this does match the behavior pre-Documentation launch, it would drop you back on the support homepage, but I agree it's a little unexpected.

Maybe we can hijack that empty search string redirect and go from there to https://wordpress.org/search/.

[ryelle]

Another note, this change might need to take place in the support theme, which lives on svn: https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/browser/sites/trunk/wordpress.org/public_html/wp-content/themes/pub/wporg-support

[jasmussen]

https://wordpress.org/support/, which by design redirects to https://wordpress.org/documentation

Are we sure this is a good redirect to have in place? While we might consider calling the Forums section simply "Forums" to match its menu item inside the Learn dropdown, at the moment the major section is simply called "Support":

So it seems confusing to me that the /support/ URL redirects to documentation. I don't know what SEO might break if we change this, so would defer to someone who knows, but to me it seems this should redirect to forums.

Maybe we can hijack that empty search string redirect and go from there to https://wordpress.org/search/.

Can potentially be the easiest fix, I'll defer to you on this, I imagine there's also an open question here related to what search system we might land instead of Google, in the default /search section.

[ryelle]

The redirect was at the request of the docs team (see #21, https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6387, https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/10/11/renaming-wordpress-org-support-to-documentation/).

This section is kind of in limbo, since the HelpHub (aka Documentation) was redesigned and moved, but the rest of the site has not been touched yet. What was "Support" was technically one site, that had the documentation articles and forums. It is now two: Documentation and "Support / Forums", but since we have not redesigned the second site yet, it's still called by the old site title, Support.

I have no opinion on renaming the Support site & changing that banner, but I don't think this ticket is a good place to have this discussion— perhaps as part of the redesign/IA shift you can propose renaming it to the support team?

I imagine there's also an open question here related to what search system we might land instead of Google, in the default /search section.

The search system a totally separate issue, so we can handle that when it's ready. Currently this form submits to https://wordpress.org/search/gutenberg/?in=support_forums (the google search specifically restricted to /support/forums/*).

We could have the empty search redirect to /support/forums/ instead of /search/, which would match the old behavior of "when empty, redirect to homepage" (since from a user perspective, forums is the homepage). Which do you think is more expected, @jasmussen ?

[jasmussen]

Whichever is the simplest fix for now seems like it can address this issue. I personally still thin the redirect is confusing, but that should not block the immediate issue at hand. What do you think?

[ryelle]

Let's redirect the empty search result to /support/forums/.

[StevenDufresne]

Can we stop submission if the search is empty? That isn't a useful user path.