I'm finally getting to work on the search script. I'm wondering if people have any feelings on this issue. Here's what I'm thinking about doing:

There will be two types of searching. Regular search will happen from the bottom of each page as it does now (assuming search is enabled in [editpage]). But instead of taking you to a results page it just reloads whatever page you are searching from (with all the graphics and all the sidebar stuff) but instead of displaying the regular content it displays all the posts that contain the search phrase.

One potential problem here is if you search on, say, 'e' you will probably get every single post ever made to that page. That could be big. So maybe it will only display as many results as you have set for the page to display normally (the 'window' setting in [editpage].) Or maybe the search results window will be a new setting in [editpage]? Either way, if you get tons of hits for a particular search you will just work your way back through them with the 'older posts' link at the bottom of the page.

Also there will be an advanced search. This will happen from a seperate page accessible through an 'advanced search' link either next to or under the search box at the bottom of each page. From the advanced search page you will (eventually) be able to search either one page or all pages (is there a need to search a subset of all pages - like treehouse and artifax but nothing else?) You can choose to search through comments as well as top level posts (you can't search comments now.) And you can limit your search results to fall between certain dates. Maybe you can specify a certain poster as well. I'm not sure how these results will be presented. Can't really use the page layout like I'm proposing for the regular search because you might get results from mulitple pages.

I'll get to work on the regular first, so maybe the questions on the advanced search will work themselves out as I go. Any input is appreciated.
- jim 8-02-2001 5:48 pm

Regular search (from the bottom of each page) now returns the full text of posts containing the search phrase inside the template of the page itself.

The search form is now a GET instead of a POST so it shows up in the URL. So now you could bookmark or otherwise refer to a set of search results like this.

So far there is no checking for too large search result sets being returned. If you search for something too general it will spit out too much information. I'll fix this as soon as I decide how to go about it.
- jim 8-03-2001 8:35 pm [add a comment]





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