Approach to custom advanced search box
You can programmatically change the filter configuration before executing the view:

$view_name    = 'my_view_name';
$display_name = 'my_display_name';
$handler_name = 'title';
$terms        = array('foo', 'bar');

$view = views_get_view($view_name);
$view-&gt;set_display($display_name);

$handler = $view-&gt;display_handler-&gt;get_handler('filter', $handler_name);
$handler-&gt;value = implode(' ', $terms);

$output = $view-&gt;preview();


This will work even without exposing the filter.