Customizing search results page

[lunadesign]

Is there any way to customize the layout of the search results page?

Specifically, I'd like to have the

Result Pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next >>

part at the top *and* bottom of the results. Is this possible?

Thanks!

[Ray]

You can do alot of customizations to the layout by using CSS as explained here, but there is no supported method for duplicating the "result pages" links as you requested.

If you are familiar with scripting, you could modify the search script to achieve this. However, we do not provide support for modified scripts.

[lunadesign]

Hi Ray....thanks for the quick response.

Yes, I'm familiar with scripting. How do I change the search script if I'm using the CGI version?

[Ray]

Ah... you can't with the CGI version. The CGI is a compiled binary executable coded in C/C++ for performance benefit. The disadvantage is that it is not available for user modification like the PHP, ASP and JS versions are.

[lunadesign]

That's what I was afraid of. I'm using ASP.NET and as I understand it, the CGI method is the only way to use ASP.NET at the moment. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

Have you guys considered having the results available via a web service or having some other sort of API?

Alternatively, having a search results template (similar to the search template) might be really useful.

[Brad]

I am trying to customize the search results page, found your instructions but still having trouble with one section of it. Can you customize the main search results blue font, the one that is underlined in blue, the actual link that takes you to the pages? I would like to make it bold and change the color the but css commands aren't letting me. Can this line be changed?

Also the other lines under the blue link line don't seem to take different fonts, even tried css font-family, can these lines be changed to different fonts? Thanks. Brad

[Ray]

That's what I was afraid of. I'm using ASP.NET and as I understand it, the CGI method is the only way to use ASP.NET at the moment. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

If you are already capturing the output of the CGI, then you could post-process the results from your ASP.NET script. For example, note that in our sample code here, the CGI output is captured within the "zoom_results" string. You can then do a string copy of the "Result pages:" section and output this before the rest of the results, etc.

CGI is not the only method to have an ASP.NET search page if your web server also allows classic ASP to be executed, then you could do a similar wrapper to call the classic ASP script to search. Likewise with PHP.

Have you guys considered having the results available via a web service or having some other sort of API?

Yes, we have considered providing a search API and it is something we would like to do. However, it is a significant task and there is not much demand for it currently. At the moment, the results are returned via XHTML and it is possible to perform post-processing (as described above), although it would be more efficient with an actual API which returns only what you requested. Our priorities are in other more requested features at the moment, but if your needs are urgent, you can contact us regarding custom development.

[Ray]

Brad,

Take a look at this support page on customising your search results if you haven't already:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/css.html

Can you customize the main search results blue font, the one that is underlined in blue, the actual link that takes you to the pages? I would like to make it bold and change the color the but css commands aren't letting me. Can this line be changed?

Most certainly. See the section entitled "Changing the appearance of links" in the above URL.

Also the other lines under the blue link line don't seem to take different fonts, even tried css font-family, can these lines be changed to different fonts?

Yes. See the section entitled "Changing fonts and colours" in the above URL.

Make sure that you save your changes to the search template file in the output directory, and make sure you upload your saved file to your web server, for your changes to take effect.

If you still have problems, give us a URL to your search page if possible and we can check what's wrong.