Pre Sales Questions

[traci]

I am building a model site for a company and they have very specific needs with the search capabilities so I need to ask some questions before purchasing your software.

First their site has 50 sub domains (minnesota.yourwebsite.com) I need to be able to partition each sub domain so it only searches within itself and not all the pages on the site. I also need it so it won't search URLs meta tags or anything like that.

First Question: Can Zoom do this?

Second: When searching I need so it searches specific things for example: in text on each models portfolio it has things like COLOR OF HAIR: blonde COLOR OF EYES: blue etc. So when someone comes to search and puts in the word blue only the models with blue eyes from minnesota.yourwebsite.com are placed into the search results.

Second Question: Can Zoom do this?

Third: Once the search is made and the results are pulled just from that sub domain and we search for blue and it pulls all the blue eyed models they want the search results delivered in this fashion:



Third Question: Can Zoom do this?

Fourth Question: This site will have new pages added every day each sub domain will. So I will need to index it at least daily. Can this be done automatically right from an admin area on the server? or do I have to run it from desktop and upload the new index every time?

Fifth Question: If all this is possible which version of the software can start us out? and if needed is it easy to upgrade to a larger version once the site get larger?

Sixth: Can this be accomplished easily without a ton of knowledge with php. I am a graphic designer and web designer by trade not a programmer so I need to be able to accomplish somewhat easily or will I have to have a programmer make a lot of changes to the scripts?

That is it for now. I thank you for answering all my questions for me and apologize for such a long post.

[David]

First their site has 50 sub domains

It is no problem to create 1 set of index files per sub-domain. The indexer by default will limit itself to the sub-domain you start in. Or you could use the categories feature.

..need it so it won't search URLs meta tags or anything like that

This requirement isn't very clear. Especailly the "anything like that" comment. Page meta data is indexed by default, but you can turn it off if you want.

So when someone comes to search and puts in the word blue only the models with blue eyes from minnesota.yourwebsite.com are placed into the search results

The default behaviour is to return any page that mentions the word blue. e.g. the blue dress, blue eyes, starred in the movie Deep Blue, etc..
I am not sure if this is what you want?

...they want the search results delivered in this fashion

You can add images to search results. See this FAQ.
Q. How do I associate images with my search results?
But the layout of the text output will not match what is in your screen shot. You can get something a lot closer to what you want using V6 of Zoom and the custom meta tags feature. See the Fruits-R-Us demo site for an example of this in action.

So I will need to index it at least daily. Can this be done automatically...

See this FAQ
Q. How do I schedule Zoom to automatically index on a regular basis?
You can install the software on the server, if you have a Windows based server, that you control, in which case no uploads are required.

..it easy to upgrade to a larger version once the site get larger

Yes. See
http://www.wrensoft.com/sales.html

Can this be accomplished easily without a ton of knowledge with php

No PHP knowledge should be required if you are flexible with the layout of the output. If you need to have something that looks exactly like your screen shot. Then you might need to write some code.

[traci]

Amazing

First Thank you for going through all that with me. What an amazing product. When will Zoom V6 be ready to go or is it already? I think that is exactly what I am looking for right there.

I believe I can sacrifice the exact layout of the search results with what you showed me with the fruit site. That is close enough I believe and it should pull basically the same information but not in that format, which is cool it just needs to be there.

Let me know about V6 because I will need it soon...

Thanks a lot...

Traci
Get Graphic... Get Noticed...

[David]

We have done about a dozen alpha releases of V6 over the last few months, and did the first beta release yesterday.

You can E-mail us to get on the list of people we are sending the beta release to. But some time in the next week, we'll probalby open up the beta release to everyone.