Guys, It did not work. I did not add too many records into the directory. Just used your sample data populating tool to add and even the categories were ur sample categories. But when I created a new place under a specific category called “Festivals” and then when I chose the “Restaurants” option from the links on the top of the page, it shows all the restaurants as populated by your sample data. Now, when I search using keywords and type the name of a place that I created and that is not assigned to the “Restaurants” category , the site forgets about the category filter and searches for the name and lists it.
When I search by restaurants, the URL is “http://wpgdtrial.localtest.me/places/restaurants/”
When I search by festivals, the URL is “http://wpgdtrial.localtest.me/places/festival/”
When I search by restaurants and they type keyword “pvsat” for searching, the URL changes to “http://wpgdtrial.localtest.me/?geodir_search=1&stype=gd_place&s=pvsat&snear=&sort_by=&sgeo_lat=&sgeo_lon=”
The URL must remain as “http://wpgdtrial.localtest.me/places/restaurants/?geodir_search=1&stype=gd_place&s=pvsat&snear=&sort_by=&sgeo_lat=&sgeo_lon=”
when I click the search button. I tried to manually change the URL to the above one and the result is fine, i.e it is not able to find PVSAT under the places/restaurants. But your search button is somehow hardcoded to forget the category selection. Guess it is a bug or I must be knowing some setting to be enabled / disabled somewhere..