Question for my site

[malljess]

I am looking to use Zoom to search for speakers by either category, last name and/or location. I am somewhat familar with the software since I have been using it on my sites for a long time.

Questions: Is it possible to have more than one search box and have multiple criteria (e.g., speaker topic and location)?

Is it possible to associate a picture with each of the results (e.g., the picture of the speaker)?

Is it possible to have a menu incorporated in the search box that limits the possible search criteria (e.g., motivational speaker, drugs and alcohol)?

Is it possible to list predetermined content from the page (e.g., all info regarding the description of the speaker)?

I believe I may be looking more for an on-line database that displays certain information about speakers. Am I correct?

Thank you.

[Ray]

Yes, what you are asking for is better suited to a custom written relational database search function. This would be capable of performing strict searches on the specific fields you mentioned, that are in your database. Zoom is better suited to searching webpages or a collection of text files and/or documents.

Zoom does not know the fields/criteria for your specific database, nor can it connect directly to your database. It can however, index a database-driven website which has dynamic web pages (eg. PHP or ASP scripts) that serve the content in a web page format.

However...

Is it possible to associate a picture with each of the results (e.g., the picture of the speaker)?

You will be able to do this with the upcoming V5.0 release of Zoom.

Is it possible to list predetermined content from the page (e.g., all info regarding the description of the speaker)?

You could do this in a limited manner by specifying this information as meta description. You can specify the size of this description to include if necessary.