How to prioritize pages over posts when searching?

Question

So I'm new to Wordpress and as such I'm not entirely sure how things work with it. But one of the problems I am having is that the default search feature treats Pages and Posts the same.

For example, I have Page called Java, then I have several posts titled Learning Java #... If I search Java, the Page comes up as the last item and the posts come before it. I'm wondering if there is a way to tweak the search so I have Pages listed first.

Also, I've googled this a bit and have seen some supposed PHP fixes to this problem, but as I said, I'm new to Wordpress so I'm not sure where exactly I'll be editing in PHP. Any help would be appreciated, and if you comment, please treat me as a real beginner and break things down so I can understand it better.

Answer 1

You need to put this code in your function.php:

function change_search_result_order($query) {
// Check if current page is search page
    if ($query->is_search) {
// Specify orderby and order, ordering will be by slug of post_type: pAge > pOst
        $query->set('orderby', 'post_type');
        $query->set('order', 'ASC');
    };
    return $query;
}

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'change_search_result_order');

By default search function work with all post type, and you can specify in which you want to make a search:

$query->set('post_type', array('page','post'));

hook pre_get_posts will fired before get any posts, so we need to modify it. And set some arguments, to get posts with specific criteria.