Site Search - whole site or just products?

[NickD]

Hi All

I followed the advice in this thread:-

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...ght=search.log

and am now able to see a history of what was searched for by users of my site. This has been most revealing.

The problem I have is that the search facility only seems to search within the product catalogue itself, and nowhere else on the site. I've got lots of stuff on brochure pages which it would be very nice for site users to be able to search through, and the contents of search.log suggests that they are already trying big-time - after all the user does a "site" search - the distinction between the products and the rest of the site is not visible to most of them (unless thay happen to have designed an Actinic site), and they just want to look all over the site, rather like search engines do.

So my question is:-

Is there a way that site search can be made to search the whole site? Or perhaps just brochure pages too? (Is there some setup thingy that I'm missing somewhere?)

All input gratefully received.

Regards

Nick

[cdicken]

Hi Nick

At the moment, the search will only index products. Sorry about that.

[NickD]

one for the wishlist...

Regards

Nick

[cdicken]

I've added it for you. Thanks Nick.

[sexy2wear]

Alternative Search

I spent a lot of time adding a CUSTOMVAR to show the Manufacturers of every product (1000+) and was devastated to find that the default Actinic search wouldn't return this information !

After much searching (no pun intended !) and testing I found the Fluid Dynamics Search Engine to be the best

http://www.xav.com/scripts/search/

It uses perl, has a nice gui back end and is highly configurable using filters. It would have no trouble indexing your other content.

http://www.sexy2wear.co.uk/search.html

I only index the 'popup' info_ files - every product has one since I implemented Normans tweak to allow the search engines to see the link......

%s" onclick="ShowPopUp(this.href,%s,%s);return false;

In my opinion this is the best Actinic tweak as Google loves all the additional pages ! Thanks Norman !

Dom
http://www.sexy2wear.co.uk

[NormanRouxel]

Thanks for the kudos.

That was one of my more convoluted one-liners. It took a serious amount of head scratching to work it out.

I hardly ever use any of these tweaks myself so it's great to see it was of use to someone.

Norman

[BSO]

Hi there,
I realise this is a reply to an old post but I have only just come across it whilst searching and was intreaged.

I cannot find the post referred to about the following code so do not know for sure what to do with it.

My question is what do you do with:

%s" onclick="ShowPopUp(this.href,%s,%s);return false;

A quick look at design text would suggest putting the above code in place of (Phase: -1 ID: 2175) which is currently javascript:ShowPopUp('%s',%s,%s);

Is this correct or is there a different way?

Any help appreciated as I would like my extended info pages indexed.

(using catalog V6.1.4)

Simon

[BSO]

Just tracked down the original post

"Making popup pages search engine friendly"

I was correct in my prediction, trouble is I am using Norcascade.

mmmmm decisions, decisions. I would like to keep my current setup but would like the benefits of this mod, not sure what to do.

[NormanRouxel]

You might be able to use both.

That issue with onclick handlers and NorCascade is due to a small problem in the twinhelix code that builds the menu.

Angus ( www.twinhelix.com ) has fixed this and there should be a post at http://www.twinhelix.com/cgi-bin/forum.pl/popupfeed/126 about this. Here's the gist of it as it applies to NorCascade.

Alternatively, open up pop_events.js and replace this fragment in the file ( at the end)

return document.popOC?document.popOC(evt)isNS4?document.routeEvent(evt):true);};}

with this:

return document.popOC?document.popOC(evt)isNS4?document.routeEvent(evt):null);};}

which I will roll into the next update, as it seems to improve IE when I return 'null' rather than 'true' for that event. Ideally IE would provide some means of respecting individual onclick functions within a global onclick function, but this is probably the best bet.

I've also attached a modified pop_events.js in case that helps.

Norman

PS I've not tested this fix in conjunction with that extended info mod so please report your experience.

[BSO]

Thanks for your reply Norman.

I did notice that there would be a problem with the extended info mod when i just tested the line to see what the problem would be with Norcascade.

I have updated the pop_events.js (I actually overwrote it with the version you attached).

Changed the ID: 2175 to the line as mentioned previously.

I haven't uploaded to the website yet but when previewing I get the error message that I beleive you have built into the extended info mod.
(Please see pic attached).

Covering the obvious:

I have double checked that I do still have
.....NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTFORMBEGIN
<input type=hidden disabled name="PU_NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTREFERENCE">.....
In my product templates and they have not been modified whilst trying out this mod.

It is actually opening up the popup info page into the main page and then opening a second popup info page which seems to be causing the problem. (I actually get of the messages attached).

There are no problems if I leave the ID: 2175 as default.

I would guess that this is a relatively simple problem that you could work out at least. Not knowing exactly how your mods work (I'm not that clever) I would not even risk messing about with it until I have informed you first.

Any light shed would be highly appreciated as always.

Simon

[NormanRouxel]

Did you update the pop_events.js in Site1?

That's the correct location for these updates. NorCascade only copies these files into a Site folder the first time it is run. This is so you can have modified scripts in aother sites.

Norman

[BSO]

I did just that Norman, I take it Actinic would re-access that file whilst previewing?

I've double checked everything was conducted.

I cant understand it, would you like me to upload these changes for you to take a look at?
Assuming you are around for a while?

[NormanRouxel]

I've now had a test at fixing this and I don't think that NorCascade (the twinhelix bit that isn't from me) and that Popup mod will ever work together. Sorry. If I find time I might have another go but don't depend on it.

Norman.

[BSO]

Hi Norman,
Thank you for you time,
Just wanted to clarify that I do have Norcascade and the popup mod working together with no problems.
Its when I change the ID:2175 that the problem begins.

Just a few last questions to clear my mind a bit and give me a few options in my decisions.

1) Is it alright for me to keep the updated pop_events.js file in use, apparently it works better?

2) Do you know if the ID:2175 line change will work if I dont use Norcascade but still use the popup mod. (trying to work out which combinations will work).


Although it would be nice to have all the mods working together, I am just trying to weight up the choices, i.e better/easier navigation for the user versus more pages being picked up by search engines.

[NormanRouxel]

It's NorCascade that's affecting the popup mod.

The popup mod should work fine with NorCascade unloaded.

The NorCascade update you downloaded is worth keeping if you stay with NorCascade.

Norman