Limitations of search engine

2 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: July 6, 2009 (RSS)

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By benedict - July 4, 2009

Hi guys,

I am using the search engine capabilities of CMSBuilder and have created a free search box off the home page that searches 8 main sections of the site. On the searchresults.php page I rank the order they come out as per a post I read on these forums. This has worked fine for a couple of clients, but now I have come across one who thinks that the search box should behave like Google - i.e. rank according to relevance, highlight the keywords in the search results, etc. Their marketing manager "talked to her Dad" and said the current method of search was "outdated technology". While naturally, I wanted to berate her for attacking my code-monkey pride, it did raise a few questions:

1. On the search results, within a section of results, how does it order them - chronologically? alphabetically?
2. For future relevance, what are the limitations of this kind of site search? At what stage do I tell them to install Google's own site search engine?
3. Are there any functions beyond what I am already using that I could add to make the search more robust?

Cheers,

B

Re: [benedict] Limitations of search engine

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By ross - July 6, 2009

Hi Benedict

Thanks for posting! I'll go over your questions one at a time :).

1. The sort order of your results is the same as any list page. You can set it in the Section Editor or by adding a 'sortOrder' option to your viewer code.

2. It's hard to say what the limitations would be as they are typically based on what your client ends up wanting. If you gave me more detail on exactly what your client wants, we'll go over the options. Of course, that might be a case by case thing :).

3. The search functions in CMS Builder are fairly straight forward so I'd say you are using what's currently available. There are different ways to implement it though and that comes back again to what's actually needed.

Specifically with highlighting the keyword, there are a few different PHP things that you can do for that. We can go over them in some more detail if you like :).

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Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
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