URL Parameter(s)

[Anonymous]

Feature request:

Please make the search parameter in the URL configurable. For example, I'm usign Zoom with CGI, and my form's code looks like this:

<form method="get" action="search.html">
<div>
<input type="text" name="zoom_query" size="7" />
<input type="submit" value="Search" />
</div>
</form>

What I'd like to do is be able to use a value of "query" instead of "zoom_query" for the name parameter. Reason being, when the search actually gets performed, it puts the parameters on the URL (and if you change the method to post it doesn't work). I'd like to keep my URLs as short and clean as possible.

So having this:
http://www.....com/search.html?zoom_query=blah

Is less desirable than having this:
http://www.....com/search.html?query=blah

Would it be possible for you to add this ability?

Thanks for your consideration!

[David]

We had deliberately made the parameters unique after we found that they could, on rare occasions, interfere with other scripts that people were including on their pages.

The choice of using GET over POST was also deliberate. It allows people to link directly to specific results pages and allows the Next and Previous links to work.

In the PHP, ASP & Javascript versions of the search script you can customize the parameters names to whatever you want. But as you point out, you can't do this with the CGI (as it is compiled code).

If we changed the parameter names in a new release, it would break 1000's of exising sites that now use these parameter names, so we don't want to do that. Having them configurable has some merit, but it would also lead to inexperienced web developers mucking up the settings, then expecting us to sort it out for them (and we already get too many support requests from inexperienced web developers).

So we will make a note of the request for V5 of the software, but it isn't our highest priority, for the reasons given above.

If you really need this, then we could give you a quote to do it as custom development.

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David