kevinblend

Ended up solving it on my own – as it turns out custom post types are not searchable by default in wordpress so I modified the search function in the functions file. For anyone trying to figure this out, paste this into ‘functions.php’:

add_filter( 'pre_get_posts', 'tgm_io_cpt_search' );
/**
 * This function modifies the main WordPress query to include an array of
 * post types instead of the default 'post' post type.
 *
 * @param object $query  The original query.
 * @return object $query The amended query.
 */
function tgm_io_cpt_search( $query ) {

    if ( $query->is_search ) {
	$query->set( 'post_type', array( 'post', 'event' ) );
    }

    return $query;

}