Editors can't search for private posts through Search widget

[cecilerainon]

When a user is an Editor, they can't search for other users' private posts through the Search widget on the front end. However, they can see these posts in WP Admin or on the author's archive page (site.com/author/username). I would expect this behavior to be either or but not a mix of the two.

To reproduce:

• Have a site with the core Search widget added to either the sidebar or footer.
• As an Administrator, publish and set a post to private.
• Connect to the Editor’s account and do the following to witness the inconsistency:

• 1) Go to WP Admin > Posts. You'll see you can search for the post: ​https://cld.wthms.co/0kU4KD
• 2) Visit the site and search for the post in the Search widget. You'll get a "Nothing Found" result: ​https://cld.wthms.co/GXViwg
• 3) Visit the author's archive. You'll see the private post listed: ​https://cld.wthms.co/jgz7s7

Tested on WordPress 5.1.1 sites. This happens regardless of the browser or theme, with or without plugins, and with or without Jetpack activated.

[audrasjb]

Hi @cecilerainon, welcome to WordPress Core Trac and… "merci pour le ticket" :-)

Self-assigning the ticket for review.

Cheers,
Jb

[audrasjb]

After having a deeper look on the issue, it appears that it's not related to the search widget but to the general search query.

Moving the ticket to Query component.

[whyisjake]

Like @audrasjb mentioned, private posts shouldn't be showing up in a query like this. Thinking this is a wontfix but open to other ideas.

[samful]

I debugged this myself and came across the same “current_user_can( "read_private_anys" )” issue as inbytesinc did 10 years ago. I believe the fix in 13509 (https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/13509) needs to be tested and committed to fix this issue.

If it helps, I also found another fix for this issue here: ​https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/110569/private-posts-pages-search

@whyisjake please look at ticket 13509 as there definitely seems to an issue with that IF statement and this issue has been around for 10 years by the look of it :(

I believe @cecilerainon is correct here and WordPress should be working in the way she expects.

[davidbaumwald]

With 5.5 Beta 1 releasing tomorrow, this is being moved to Future Release. If any maintainer or committer feels the remainder of this ticket can be resolved in time, or wishes to assume ownership during a specific cycle, feel free to update the milestone accordingly.

[boonebgorges]

Determined in the course of #48556 that this is a duplicate of #13509 and #48556.

[peterwilsoncc]

As mentioned above, this is a duplicate of #48556.

I'll be reverting the commit [49830] as it introduces a bug for unregistered post types but I will leave this ticket closed as most discussion has occurred on #48556.