9 years ago
8
Topic

Hi

I wish I can share with you some thoughts about the general search feature we all have in our websites and the connection with Joomla/Seblod. So far we have three ways to propose a general search in a web site:

* the joomla search (search) component : the old well known feature but without autosuggestion, relevance ordering and indexation

* the advanced search (finder): this time with all these new features but mostly on the articles only (which is not a problem with Seblod since every seblod content is a joomla article)

* the seblod search (with the search generic plugin for example)

* external search (such as Google Custom Search but many others exist)

The joomla classic search is a toy, we don't consider it here.

The joomla finder is much better but the SEF urls that are generated on the results are mostly wrong since the Joomla router only knows standard joomla menu items and not the seblod lists! Hopefully the new Joomla router that is being developped  will help here but not yet.

External search engines are very easy to implement (just copy a few lines in a custom module) and work on the generated pages, not from the Joomla database. They don't have the difficulty to rebuild the right sef url from the results since they only display existing real pages urls. However you have to pay for it.

Seblod search solutions are very flexible but once you get the seblod list of the results you still have to rebuild the right urls for each content. The SEE link plugin can't be used since you don't know the final menu item to use from the start. it has to be dynamic. This is why we developp the dynamic menu link plugin at http://www.pulsar-informatique.com/telechargements-gratuits/dynamic-view-link-plugin 

But what are your solutions please ?

thanks

cyril

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572 Posts
_jrmo
9 years ago
1
Level 1

Hi Cyril,

Thanks for the discussion starter. This is indeed an interesting topic and a great one to open up to the community for ideas.

When you use the SEBLOD search with the Search Generic field plugin, can't you set the SEF settings to "Joomla native" to get half way there? It means you need to have search & list menu items set up to list each of your different content items, but the router should be able to do the rest. I haven't implemented a site with a global search like this for a while, but from my experience this should work?

_jrmo

9 years ago
0
Level 2

Hello

The joomla router won't be able to select which menuitem to take depending on the content type of each result of the search.

From what I encounter in real sites there is no way Joomla knows which itemID it should take 

The problem is even worse since now many contents can be accessed from different menu items 

cyril

332 Posts
Kenneth
9 years ago
0
Level 1

Hi Cyril,

I'm looking into solving a search case like this now. I'm wondering if you have a site with your plugin up and running that I can have a look at, to see the results after using this plugin?

332 Posts
Kenneth
9 years ago
0
Level 1

I added a item to the tracker. Please support this with your comments and let's hope it will be fixed.

http://www.seblod.com/resources/tracker/22595 

9 years ago
0
Level 1

Hi Kenneth

The topic is not only the lack of relevance ordering with the seblod search generic field but the overall choice for the general search.

Again the very problem is ... the joomla router. You know the joomla router is the key of many issues with Joomla.

We used our dynamic link plugin in a few sites because we often need to switch to various itemID depending on the content type of the element of the seblod list. 

However it is not a smart dynamic link, you have to tell the plugin which itemID matches with which content type (or category...) because the joomla router is lost

thanks

cyril

9 years ago
0
Level 1

Hi 

As for the search generic, it could be replaced by our autocomplete field that allows you to define auto suggestions ordered as you want. 

thanks

cyril

103 Posts
Osep45
8 years ago
1
Level 1

Hello,

I meet this problem of the SEF's url on Joomla 3.5.1 and Seblod 3.8.3.

But I didn't succeed to use Plusarinformatique's plugins...

Is there another solution yet ? 

Best regards,

4229 Posts
Kadministrator
8 years ago
0
Level 2

Please don't reopen 1 year old posts, this topic is not related to any sef problems

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