Problems defining my own template..bug?

[MikeR]

It seems with the latest beta version there is something wrong when defining my own template.

What I have been doing up to this point is the following.

1) Index my site using the generate "Advanced" search page.
2) Browse to my search page and do "view source".
3) Copy and paste that code into a new search_template.html file.
4) Reindex my site using the "Do not generate" search page and "do not upload search page".
5) Happily enjoy searching.

Now when I do these same steps in the latest beta and I browse to the search, all I get is:

"No seach query entered."

Is this broken or am I doing something wrong?

FYI I use a Windows CGI for my script.

[Ray]

No, that's currently normal if you have "Do not generate search form" selected, and you access "search.cgi" as your search page from your browser.

This is the same behaviour as it was in V4.2. You might not have seen it if you used a custom search page which embedded the CGI however.

The "No search query entered" text was put in place to cater for users who had a search box in a different frame (and thus disabled on the search results page), and they wanted a message when users clicked through with an empty search query.

We understand that it is a little confusing for some other scenarios, and we have plans to change this. We'll most likely be able to make it so that the message will not appear unless someone actually clicked through a search form without entering a search query.

[MikeR]

No, that's currently normal if you have "Do not generate search form" selected, and you access "search.cgi" as your search page from your browser.

This is the same behaviour as it was in V4.2. You might not have seen it if you used a custom search page which embedded the CGI however.

The "No search query entered" text was put in place to cater for users who had a search box in a different frame (and thus disabled on the search results page), and they wanted a message when users clicked through with an empty search query.

We understand that it is a little confusing for some other scenarios, and we have plans to change this. We'll most likely be able to make it so that the message will not appear unless someone actually clicked through a search form without entering a search query.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. When I browse to the search.cgi when I have my own template the page has nothing but "No seach query entered.". The rest of the page is blank, No "Search this site" or categories, or search box, nothing but that message.

The way I have explained it is how I have been doing this for over a year now using Zoom and search.cgi (not imbedded). It is exactly how I did it with my current production website running 4.2 and it works perfectly. It was working fine in v5B11 but when i went to B14 it stopped working.

I used this method from the FAQ. http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support...tml#searchform

"You may also want to disable the search form that is automatically displayed at the top of the search results page (so that it doesn't appear twice). You can do this from the "Search page" tab of the Configuration window. For the "Search form" dropdown option, select "Do not generate"."


As well as what was told to me in a post I made back in May of 2005 regarding category order.

http://www.wrensoft.com/forum/showthread.php?t=273

"To specify categories, we would recommend looking at the HTML source of the generated search form and copying and pasting the category dropdown HTML for the option values required for each category."

If I am doing something wrong I would really like to know what so I can start putting v5 into production but this is currently holding me back.

I use search.cgi and I need to define my own search page for category adjustments. How do I do that differently than the way I am doing now?

Thanks

I have attached 3 images that show the config settings I am using in 4.2. I have made my own search_template file and I am browsing directly to the search.cgi and it works.

[Ray]

Perhaps you misunderstood me. When I browse to the search.cgi when I have my own template the page has nothing but "No seach query entered.". The rest of the page is blank, No "Search this site" or categories, or search box, nothing but that message.

So you actually have no problem with the "No search query entered" message appearing, but only that the search form is missing? Sorry, I thought you meant that you were not seeing this message at all in the previous version (which I can see now is not the case since your 3rd screenshot shows the message appearing under the search form).

In that case, I would suggest checking the following:

1.) Make sure you have uploaded the modified search_template.html to your server and to the same folder where the CGI is hosted. This might be obvious but it is worth checking since you did not mention this in the steps in your original post. You can make sure if this file contains a working HTML form by opening the search_template file directly from your browser, and seeing if the form is there.

2.) Make sure that the following text:

<!--ZOOMSEARCH-->

appears in the search_template.html file, and most importantly, it must appear on a line of its own and it is not on the same line as other HTML. It is possible that when you pasted the form HTML, it went on the same line as the ZOOMSEARCH tag. I suspect that this might be the problem, and I can confirm that this would cause the form to not appear. It is a documented requirement that the ZOOMSEARCH tag needs to be on a line of its own.

If you continue to have problems, can you e-mail us your "search_template.html" file, and we can take a closer look.

[MikeR]

Done and dusted. It was missing the <!--zoomsearch>

This is however something different than before. In the previous versions when you browsed to the search page and did view source, the <!--zoomsearch> was there and I was just able to copy and paste into my own search template file. In the latest version when you do view source it's not there.

Anyway it's working now and I learned something. Thanks for the great support.

Cheers.

[Ray]

Glad to hear the problem has been resolved.

This is however something different than before. In the previous versions when you browsed to the search page and did view source, the <!--zoomsearch> was there and I was just able to copy and paste into my own search template file. In the latest version when you do view source it's not there.

No, this has not changed. The <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> text does not appear when you "View Source" from the "search.cgi" page in any version of the software. Perhaps you are confusing this with another text string (such as the version print out)? The required ZOOMSEARCH tag is included in the default search template file generated by Zoom, so if you were previously pasting into the default template, then this would not have needed to be added manually.

One common cause of the missing ZOOMSEARCH tag are webpage editors that has "optimization" features, which automatically strip out HTML comments without warning (MS Word is one culprit, Dreamweaver also has this feature, but it is not enabled by default AFAIK). These sort of features remove the required ZOOMSEARCH tag and they are generally documented (by Macromedia et al) as a Bad Idea and are known to break all sorts of script functionalities.