DataBox provides a simple search engine feature that will provide
your visitors the ability to search your database.
There are no cgi-scripts and no back end server programs to install.
To generate a search engine for your published data, follow these simple steps:
1. On the main DataBox form, check each field that you would like included in your search engine database when publishing your pages.
** Note: ** DO NOT select fields that you would not normally search against, e.g. ZIP codes, telephone numbers, etc. as the fields you select will form part of a search database which must be kept to a minimum for download speed.
2. Select "Publish->Publishing Setup options->Search Engine Settings" from the main menu bar, or press <Control-E> as a shortcut.
3. Check the SearchEngine box at the top of the form to 'enable' the Search engine database to be published along with your pages. Then, nominate whether you would like a single search database to be generated for the entire database, or, one search engine for each Category of data in your database.
4. Select the Search View fields that you would like to appear for each record that matches your visitors search request. This is similar to the Quick View fields. For every row that matches the search when checking against the fields identified in Step 1, the fields identified here will be displayed.
Again, keep the number of fields displayed to a minimum in order to reduce the size of the search engine download file. A visitor can always click on one of the result lines to get the full 'detail' display of any record.
5. The other values on the Search Engine setup form can be left as their default values, which are:
i) Initial Search Engine Target Frame [_top]
ii) Size of Top Search Frame [ 100 ]
iii) Restart page [ sfx_index.htm ]
(when search engine closed)
iv ) Restart frame [ _top ]
v) Closing Engine Target Frame [_top]
The restart frame can be used if your default home page with your DataBox index displayed is contained within a Frame. Use this value to specify the target frame for the DataBox index page to appear once a user closes the search engine.
6. Specify the percentage column width your selected data fields should occupy in the results page.
When you have finished the setup, simply select the Publish option and either a single Search Engine button will appear on your published Index page or a clickable Search Link will appear for each Category.
When clicked, the search engine page will be displayed. The first time a visitor enters a search, the 'compressed' search engine database will be downloaded to their browser to locate the current search results and to locate further search results.
Once the search engine has been received and the first search processed (the engine is not case sensitive) - all subsequent searches are virtually instantaneous !
The Search Engine Supports 'AND' & 'OR' in searches but these cannot be mixed.
e.g. "BMW or Mercedes or Jag"
or "Hotel and pool"
are valid, but
"BMW or Mercedes and Green"
would produce unknown results.
NOTE:
If the size of the largest Search Engine file exceeds 75,000 bytes - a warning will appear suggesting that you may like to consider reducing the number of searchable fields - or the number of display fields for your search engine such that the download search engine time is kept to a minimum for your visitors.
Remember, when testing locally, Internet Explorer does not like parameter passing between two pages and therefore the first search is ignored.
This will not happen when published to the Web. It should only occur when testing on a PC locally.
If you include 'clickable' links in your Search View results pages, be sure to add 'target=_top' to force each clicked link to use the whole of the browser form when loading the linked page.
If you don't do this, the DataBox search engine box and button still appear on the top of the form and will not work correctly in this mode.
Alternatively, specify 'target=_new' on clickable links to force a new browser window to open if a link is clicked.
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For further help, please view the appropriate sections.
If there are any areas not covered sufficiently, or you have comments, please e-mail to documentation@simplewebfx.com.
