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Feb
22
2007
Make Your Joomla Search More Useful
Written by Steve Burge   
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The other day I'd been doing some testing on the search features for client's site and I came up with some interesting results. This website, based around sports, was pulling up results headed "Mambo", "PHP.net", "MySQL.com".

I checked on Alledia.com and the same thing was happening:

search.png

I'd forgotten something really simple ... by default Joomla comes with the "Search Newsfeeds", "Search Weblinks" and "Search Contacts" mambots published. If you never get around to deleting all the newsfeeds and weblinks, they'll then turn up in the search results.

So, I unpublished those mambots, and also those the called "Search Sections" and "Search Categories". I figure that people are looking for individual content items rather than general folders on a subject.

A small change, but hopefully it will speed up the search results and also make them more useful.

 

Comments  

 
#1 Klaus Nitsche 2007-02-22 01:55
Thanks for the tip!

Another useful thing is to change the default setting from "any words" to "all words" - nobody searching for "joomla templates" would want results for "joomla" OR for "templates", right?

Unfortunately, this has to be done by hacking the core code in components/com_search/search.html.php.
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#2 Steve Burge 2007-02-22 08:08
Hey Zorro - that sounds like a useful hack.

By any chance, could you post the code change or a link to it?
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#3 Klaus Nitsche 2007-02-26 08:42
Hi Steve,

sure, no problem.

In /components/com_search/search.html.php:

Find line 126, replace 'any' with 'all'.
Find line 215, replace 'any' with 'all'.

Also, in /components/com_search/search.php:

Find line 102, replace 'any' with 'all'.

That should do it. These line numbers are for Joomla 1.0.12.

Not pretty, hacking the core code, but someone's gotta do it. ;-)
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#4 Steve Burge 2007-02-26 13:26
Thanks Zorro - thats a nice useability hack for the module

I know a lot of people get frustrated by too many search results and they're often not willing to spend the time clicking on "Advanced Search" and entering thier query there.
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#5 Anthony .K 2007-03-17 11:13
hi can u guys tells me about how to make advanced search in my website , coz i cant find a module that include an advanced search in it.

Thankx
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#6 Steve Burge 2007-03-18 08:40
Hi Anthony

What extra features are you looking for in an "Advanced" Search?
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#7 Anthony .K 2007-03-19 20:54
Hey Steve

Im looking for a "advanced" search that have extra features / requirement for now is only to add one condition :

search in or or or

(please refer to my webssite : www.debii.curtin.edu.au)

without this condition, the search function will grab information from
all of above. So the first thing is i should try to figure out set this
condition filter to limit the search result.


Thank you
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#8 Steve Burge 2007-03-20 07:48
Hi Anthony

Sad to say, I don't there is a more sophisticated search component available for Joomla currently.

The extensions site has a list of search products but not seem to provide the functionality you're looking for:
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,listcats/cat_id,1839/Itemid,35/
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#9 Anthony .K 2007-03-20 08:56
hi Steve
thx for your advice , im already look on those site , and yes it doesn't have search module that im looking for , but if u would like to know what im looking for , please visit this site : http://forge.joomla.org/sf/search/do/search

this kind of search that im looking for , if u have any idea pls let me know , coz i really need this kind of module

thanks for your time Steve i appreciate that
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#10 ouija 2007-03-28 02:05
is there any way to get the search to exclude certain content and/or catagories/sections?

The reason being is i have a section that basically has random facts that are displayed on my main page, and are not accessable through any menus and I don't want users being able to pull them up using the search as the do now... is there any way to exclude/include specific content catagories/sections from the search?

also, does anyone know what the parameter "Set Itemid" in the search module does? I thought this was my solution, but not sure how to use it and cannot find anything in regards to what that function is for...

Just curious
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