title: Magento custom search form
body: <p>I am trying to create custom search functionality in Magento 1.9. Instead of writing it from scratch, I want to piggy back the default search functionality and add in custom filters. First I copied the form.min template and replaced with drop downs that I want to use.</p>
  
  <p>form.custom.phtml:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  $catalogSearchHelper =  $this-&gt;helper('catalogsearch');
  
  $_helper = Mage::helper('catalog/category');
  $_categories = $_helper-&gt;getStoreCategories();
  ?&gt;
  
  &lt;form id="search_custom_form" action="&lt;?php echo $catalogSearchHelper-&gt;getResultUrl() ?&gt;" method="get"&gt;
  
      &lt;div class="select-box item"&gt;
          &lt;label for="finder"&gt;GIFT FINDER&lt;/label&gt;
          &lt;select id="customS" name="finder"&gt;
              &lt;option value=""&gt;Please select&lt;/option&gt;
              &lt;?php 
              foreach ($_categories as $key =&gt; $value) {
                  echo("&lt;option value='" . $value["name"] . "'&gt;" . $value["name"] . "&lt;/option&gt;");
              }
              ?&gt;
          &lt;/select&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  
      &lt;div class="item"&gt;
          &lt;label for="for"&gt;FOR&lt;/label&gt;
          &lt;select id="for"&gt;
              &lt;option value=""&gt;Please select&lt;/option&gt;
              &lt;option value="him"&gt;HIM&lt;/option&gt;
              &lt;option value="her"&gt;HER&lt;/option&gt;
          &lt;/select&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  
      &lt;div classs="item"&gt;
          &lt;label for="delivery"&gt;DELIVERY OPTION&lt;/label&gt;
          &lt;select id="delivery"&gt;
              &lt;option value="express"&gt;EXPRESS DELIVERY&lt;/option&gt;
              &lt;option value="standard"&gt;STANDARD POST&lt;/option&gt;
          &lt;/select&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  
      &lt;div classs="item"&gt;
          &lt;label for="price"&gt;DELIVERY OPTION&lt;/label&gt;
          &lt;select id="price"&gt;
              &lt;option value="&lt;250"&gt;LESS THAN £250&lt;/option&gt;
              &lt;option value="&gt;250"&gt;MORE THAN £250&lt;/option&gt;
          &lt;/select&gt;
      &lt;/div&gt;
  
      &lt;button type="submit" title="&lt;?php echo $this-&gt;__('Find') ?&gt;" class="button search-button"&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;?php echo $this-&gt;__('Find') ?&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/button&gt;
  
      &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
      //&lt;![CDATA[
          var searchForm = new Varien.searchForm('search_custom_form', '', '');
      //]]&gt;
      &lt;/script&gt;
  &lt;/form&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have included the above template on my home page using <code>{{block type="core/template" name="custom-search" as="custom-search" template="catalogsearch/form.custom.phtml"}}</code>, I have copied the core files into my own template folder and now I find myself stuck. 
  Can anyone offer a better alternative or solution as to what I should do?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>