Hi!
1. Make sure that the compact box layout is disabled, you may have enabled it by accident. That will do the trick.
2. Set the following settings: https://i.imgur.com/6zMZx7w.png
3. Sure! Make sure the magnifier and return actions are set to the default “Redirect to the results page” option.
4. You can solve this two ways
– one is to create another search bar and use that on the results page, then you don’t need any custom code.
– The other one is to use this custom CSS on the results page to hide the search settings area.
I don’t recommend making direct changes to the plugin files, as plugin updates will automatically overwrite them. Usually the search results page has the “search” class appended on the body element, so this custom CSS should isolate it:
body.search .asp_ss {
display: none !important;
}