Is there a way to use Low Search to return results by author?

Question

We would like to be able to perform a free text search using an author name and return all posts credited to that author, is this possible with Low Search?

Answer 1

The method Jamie mentioned will indeed work. You can also try and use Low Author, which saves the author screen name as a searchable read-only field. Add that field to your entries, and you'll be able to use keywords to search by author.

Edit: If you're using Low Search 4+, you can now also use the Members filter. Once installed, use the parameters members:screen_name (exact matches) or members:search:screen_name (partial matches) with the same result.

Answer 2

I don't know if anything has changed in more recent versions, but Low himself suggested using Solspace's Preparse addon for cases like this:

http://gotolow.com/blog/searching-non-field-data-with-low-search