New Customer - A Few Product Suggestions

[jcocking]

I have implemented Zoom on my website, LotusElan.net. Indexing about 3000 pages using the cgi module. Everything is going great after one day.

A couple of product suggestions for future releases:

1. Customization of the Search Script. It would be nice to be able to do simple customization of the search script without touching the search.cgi file. For example a simple menu of the 5 key elements: search box, search results line, results found, #pages of results and the search results. The menu should allow:

- Showing or no showing the line
- Sort order of the first four elements
- Ability to assign a style class

This would allow simple menu changes to control the heart of the applicaiton.

2. An FTP upload that does not shut down the search engine. I have noticed that during the upload process, the search engine becomes inoperable due to different files. With a 3000 page site, that will be going to 8000 pages by the end of the year, the upload times are too long for the search engine to be down. Have you considered an ftp approach where the files are uploaded under a temp name. The last step of the ftp is a delete and rename of the *.dat files. This would keep the down time to seconds. Additionally, it would allow the search engine to run, if something happened during the file upload process.

Just a couple of suggestions.

jeff
LotusElan.net

[Ray]

Thanks for the suggestions.

A couple of points,

1.) Alot of customization is already possible via the use of CSS and the ZLANG language files. The language files (from the Configuration window, under the "Languages" tab) allows you to modify the text that is used for the messages (or completely translate them). The CSS allows you to position, change the appearance of, or hide certain elements as they are currently defined. While there isn't currently a separate style class for every individual element (things like "x results found", and "x pages of results" are grouped in the "summary" class), this was designed with the intention of keeping the CSS simple (we still get alot of users coming to us with none to very little CSS knowledge). For future versions, we are considering adding more CSS classes, and increasing the ability to customize the output.

Unfortunately, there is really more than "5 key elements" to implement a simple menu system as proposed. While the 5 you mentioned may be enough for you, we've come across users with very different requirements, and would want control over another element, and in total, it would be more like 30 elements, which would make a very messy and unfriendly configuration system. We are considering alternatives such as more extensive template files, but this also has its disadvantages. Nonetheless, we'll keep your suggestion in mind.

2.) Yes, we have also considered this, and we may add this option in Version 5.0. The disadvantage to doing this is that it would require twice the amount of disk space on the web server while the files are being uploaded. So we may add this as an user configurable option.

[jcocking]

1. I understand there are a large number of elements being returned, but being able to control the 5 major blocks of elements would be a start. I have reviewed the css classes and the options of customization are pretty limited. Any thing you can do to allow changes without touching core code is a win in my book. Touching core code creates upgrade issues.

2. This would be highly desired. If a site is worried about having the search engine down for 10 minutes, then the cost of the extra disk space is a minor concern. For most of my sites, a 10 minute outage is ok. On the sites where the outage will not work, the disk space is minimal compared to the rest of the site.

As a side note, can you place the error messages in the lang files. When the index is being uploaded, the message indicates a serious error. I would like to easily change it to we are reindexing, come back shortly.

jeff

[David]

1. As Ray pointed out there is a lot of customisation that can be done via CSS and the language file. While there is clearly more that could be done, I would disagree that it is 'pretty limited'. To a some extent the modifications possible are only limited by your imagination and knowledge of CSS.

2. I agree. If you had a Windows based server you could also consider placing the indexer on the server. Thus avoiding the FTP step and the 10min outsge to the search function. You'll need full control over your server to do this.

I agree the scripts don't handle the situation where half the files are uploaded very well. The upload & rename solution is the best way to address this.

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David