Search That Actually Finds Things

A blog search box that only matches titles is barely worth having — most of what a reader is looking for lives in the body of a post, not its headline. The search here (/blog/search/?q=...) matches across title, intro, and body text, so a reader hunting for a specific fact or phrase actually finds the post it's in, not just the posts whose titles happen to contain their search term.

It's wired into Wagtail's own search backend, which means:

• No separate search service to run, configure, or pay for — it works out of the box on a fresh install.
• Results are paginated the same way the main index and category pages are, so a broad search term doesn't dump fifty results onto one endless page.
• Only live, public posts are searchable — a draft sitting in review never surfaces in search results a reader could stumble onto.

The search box itself lives in the nav on every page, not tucked away on a dedicated search page you have to already know exists — the fastest way to make a search feature useless is to hide it.