This is an odd behavior that I was able to replicate with the default Twenty Thirteen theme on my blog (talked.tv):

I password protected my most recent post (an assessment I was giving my students). Now, when I do a search on my forum, it returns a notification that the “post” is password protected. If I enter the password I created for the assessment I gave my students, the search returns the results.

After removing the password from the post, the forum search behaves as it should.

Can anyone replicate this or is my problem specific to my blog? Thank you for any help.

[@johnjamesjacoby Keymaster 11 years, 2 months ago]

If by “post” you mean “topic” or “reply” then the search results page should be showing the password entry form in place of “topic” or “reply” content.

If by “post” you mean a literal blog post, that’s somehow appearing within the forums search output, that doesn’t seem right and doesn’t happen in normal circumstances.

Possibly related, when I search your site, no results appear at all.

[@talkedtv Participant 11 years ago]

Problem solved. It was a problem with the theme.

[@scott_n Participant 7 years, 8 months ago]

@talkedtv — I know it’s been three years, but if you can remember and describe here how your theme caused this problem and how you fixed it, I’d be most appreciative! My forum search is exhibiting the exact same behavior, and I am using a highly customized theme, including custom bbPress templates.

EDIT: I did come up with a workaround, but it’s clunky as it requires creating a blank placeholder page with the slug search. In my page.php template, right after the_post() is called, I added this:

if ( strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/search/') === 0 ) {
    $post = get_page_by_path('search');
}