Filter by custom field and remove "custom field" label

@ Ellen

RE: just to clarify, you are not able to help me add the additional drop down? Would it be easier to add an additional drop down for a non-custom field?

I do offer custom development services, so yes I can help. Would you like a quote?

Registering a custom field is where I would start since it is the best way forward.

I do give little shortcode code snippets and CSS bit in the support forum, but developing custom fields with search does go beyond what can supported in the forum.

RE: I would still like to figure out how to refer to the element both in CSS and in the shortcode, so that I can make it bold and add a string to get the label text to show up

This line of code:

if ( ! empty( $text ) ) echo '' . esc_html( $text ) . '';

You can tweak to have whatever label you want and add classes for CSS targeting so you can style it any way you want.

RE: I am receiving a syntax error that says there is an unexpected “<”

You need to watch the opening and closing PHP tags … <?php and ?>. I suspect you have inserted a PHP open tag within a set of PHP tags.