How do I create a ‘selection’ criteria list’ that will then dictate which posts are generated when the user presses search?

Your terminology is a little off. Search implies providing a search word of phrase and receiving matched when it is found in content.

What you describe is commonly called filters or facets (sometimes faceted search).

Implementing it would depend on your exact data architecture. You might use custom taxonomies, but really there aren’t details in your question to guess about that.

There are some plugins that implement faceting, but none that I have used myself.

Overall you need:
– more research on how your data will be structured;
– more research on how faceting will be implemented for it.

No quick answer possible here.

Related Posts:

  1. How to get post ID of the current page/post inside a widget?
  2. widget should display post archive by year and on click also by month
  3. Which file displays the date archive?
  4. Get all posts by post_author
  5. Displaying a widget only on long posts (over X characters)
  6. How can I display widget in a Page or Post?
  7. Ajax load more button in Recent posts widget
  8. I want to display custom text widgets for each post in the sidebar?
  9. remove post and categories/tags count from right now dashboard widget
  10. Widget that shows categories with posts numbers
  11. Getting Duplicate Posts on Home Page with Widget Added Between Posts
  12. Display current post position in Elementor Posts widget
  13. Custom posts listing widget always returns 1 extra result
  14. Need to know custom code to display random and most viewed posts in wordpress posts and pages
  15. Load widget only on blog posts
  16. Widget to show posts in the sidebar basing on its IDs
  17. How to show multiple posts thumbnail, title and date in widget
  18. Move position in post list for a custom checkbox column
  19. Add checkbox in admin post list – show checked post in widget
  20. Create a List of Widgets, where each widget holds three attributes
  21. Custom Fields – How to get the list of a specific active widget each time it rendered
  22. How do i bring out post category name in my widget?
  23. post__in no longer works in wordpress 5.0.3
  24. Posts on Sidebar only
  25. Creating widget – ask for selecting a post in the admin panel
  26. How to display most popular posts from certain category in sidebar?
  27. Post List Widget with custom posts and editing the Read More Link
  28. Hide first blog post in content and output it in widget
  29. How to use in_category?
  30. How can to use the players from the Media Widgets in the body of a post to play audio and video files
  31. How to have more post in a page than in your home page
  32. How to add a widget area between blog posts in Genesis Framework?
  33. wordpress pinboard theme [closed]
  34. Output number of WordPress posts remaining until a post milestone is reached
  35. Image inside the content is replaced with featured image from my older post
  36. ZIP up all images displayed in a [gallery] and offer as download link
  37. the_author() returns empty string
  38. Custom permalink structure only for default posts
  39. Email admin when post pending?
  40. WordPress Number of Posts Not Changing With posts_per_page
  41. Adding a Nav menu to post admin
  42. Comments enabled, but disabled at the same time
  43. Mass Update lines of code for all posts
  44. set role specific screen options in post summary page
  45. How to get a nofication when post submitted
  46. How to link up “read more” on excerpts hack from WP Recipies
  47. Creating a admin widget for /wp-admin/post.php?
  48. Any idea why wp_insert_post is succeeding but not returning?
  49. get custom image size
  50. Does an article (post) id ever change?
  51. Get Posts via Taxonomy Term Name with Space
  52. Create post for every user?
  53. Auto “expire” all of an authors posts on spcific date
  54. How to pass Post_ID variable from theme’s Single.php to custom Plugin using AJAX
  55. Yearly archive page for future year
  56. Driving a random quote like functionality with database
  57. current post with current author
  58. Addition Text to Post Titles (Custom Post Types) in RSS
  59. Why aren’t my posts/pages showing up in my WordPress Theme?
  60. Assign category to new post via URL
  61. Show certain posts in a LIST format that members have been granted access to
  62. WordPress custom Query for Posts in Category display posts multiple times
  63. Categories list into registration form
  64. WordPress Local And Live Site
  65. Automatically create a new page daily with last three posts
  66. Add filter to the end of the post
  67. Indirect modification of overloaded property WP_Post::$ancestors has no effect
  68. How do I change the location of post-specific information?
  69. ACF to select posts not displaying on blog page
  70. Benefits to using semantic HTML in post content? [closed]
  71. How can I insert a new markup element after 4 posts automatically? [closed]
  72. the_excerpt is displaying excerpts of every post
  73. Post: how to set created date after post has been published [closed]
  74. WordPress loop not working on static front page
  75. Sidebar on single.php not showing up
  76. remove all custom post created
  77. Hide content from Post Preview
  78. How to get the next and previous image title from attachment or gallery?
  79. Pagination for posts inside a specific category
  80. Creating a redirect option for current page url
  81. How to edit a custom theme?
  82. WordPress posts have a different URL to the index
  83. How to put the author of the post in the comments?
  84. Blog posts pagination not working
  85. unable to write to the database while uploading images
  86. query posts with selected post ids first
  87. How can I create a Survey Form in WordPress that users can fill in and then submit the entire survey contents as a post?
  88. wp_query args with relation
  89. Creating Ordered Query using Meta_key
  90. Stop images from being displayed on the front-end of the site
  91. Posts tagged with a-new-tag does not appear
  92. Add something after all sticky posts in The Loop
  93. How to show different categories in different pages?
  94. hypher.js doesn’t work to IE and Chrome
  95. Password protection doesn’t prompt for password on pages
  96. Automatically search and replace link in content (pages/posts)?
  97. How to update wp_posts with just the returned comment count from wp_comments (SQL GROUP BY)
  98. How to make internal links creating plugin to respect ACF?
  99. How to change url of posts?
  100. How to link Post Title to uploaded file?