Wordpress Installation of search function

[sheimdal]

Hello,

Great Software! So great that I'm trying to do an install on a Wordpress site by doing this;

The site has a plugin installed that permits execution of PHP within any normal page or post. I've tried many things and the PHP runs great. I've copied all of the code from "Search.php" into the page and am now getting this error;

Zoom files missing error: Zoom is missing one or more of the required index data files.
Please make sure the generated index files are uploaded to the same path as this search script.

You can view the page at this link; http://www.orrvweb.com/?page_id=2809.

All of the required ZOOM files are located at http://www.orrvweb.com/search/

I'm hoping that I can get this working by making small changes to the Search.php file. I'm hoping to avoid the awkward method of styling search_template.html. It would be great to make integration of your software as simple as possible on Wordpress.

Any advice you may have would be greatly appreciated!

Scott

[David]

Our search script expects all the index files to be in the same folder as the script itself.

So having the search script in your root folder and the index files in a sub-folder isn't going to work.

[Ray]

Instead of copying all the code from "search.php", you might want to consider using an include() or virtual() statement instead.

You can then modify search_template.html to have nothing but the <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> tag, and allow all your styling to be done before and after the include() statement on your Wordpress page.

The benefit of doing this is that we can actually support you should you have any problems with the search engine behaviour (since "search.php" is left intact). If you copy and modify the code, we cannot help as your modifications may have changed the script's behaviour.

More details on embedding search.php inside another PHP script is described in the FAQ here:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/faq_ssi.html

[sheimdal]

Making progress but have one last issue

Ray,

Thanks for the input! We followed your advice and have made great progress. We took a stock template page and embedded this code;

<div style="float: left; width: 660px;text-align: center;">
<?php include 'search.php'; ?>
</div>

All ZOOM files reside in the root directory.

You can see the result at http://www.orrvweb.com/?page_id=2809

We've also set the same URL as the Link Back URL.

Our problem is that doing a search does not show results but instead links back to the homepage. The URL looks like its not redirecting back to our search page.

For testing we set up a "root/search" folder and put an identical set of files in that directory with one exception; when we complied the files we left the Link Back url blank.

We can't figure out where we're going wrong.

Scott

[Ray]

Ah, that's because you have a HTTP GET parameter ("?page_id=2809") in your URL. When you have that as your link back URL, the form HTML looks like this:

<form method="get" action="http://www.orrvweb.com?page_id=2809" class="zoom_searchform">

The problem is that any GET parameter in the action= attribute URL like that gets dropped by the browser when it submits the form.

The way around this is to define your own search form HTML. As described in the FAQ here:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support...tml#searchform

Then you can change the form parameters and have something like this:

<form method="get" action="http://www.orrvweb.com/">
<input type="hidden" name="page_id" value="2809" />
<input type="text" name="zoom_query" size="20" />
<input type="submit" value="Search" />
... <!-- rest of the form goes here like described in the FAQ above -->
</form>

Note the hidden parameter used to pass your page_id value.

[sheimdal]

Ray,

Your advice is spot on! The site is working well but with one small issue to be resolved! Check it out at this address;

http://www.orrvweb.com/?page_id=2809

The last problem is with PDF files. We have a growing number of technical reports in PDF format. The search engine finds them, indexes them and provides them in the search results. But the link to the document is broken because each link is appended with the following string;

d7bd4#search="gis"?9d7bd4

Here is the complete link from the search results;

http://www.orrvweb.com/wp-content/uploads/whitepaper/HPASSrovTracking.pdfd7bd4#search="gis"?9d7bd4

I really appreciate your help!

Scott

[David]

I am wondering if these URLs with the garbage characters are being generated by your site.
What is the URL of the page that contains the links to these PDF file?

[Ray]

In addition to providing us with the URL to the page which links to this PDF file, can you also double check that your "search.php" file has not been modified and is original as provided.

I just tried indexing that URL directly (http://www.orrvweb.com/wp-content/uploads/whitepaper/resistivitywhitepaper2.pdf?9d7bd4) and the search results here are OK, and does not look like what you have.

[sheimdal]

Ray,

There is something strange going on. The "?9d7db4" is somehow being appended to the URLs of actual documents that are downloaded and viewed outside of the Wordpress site. Content within the Wordpress framework is fine. The Search.php file is replaced every time we index the site; I think its probably OK.

I'm going to blow away that entire section and rebuild it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Scott

[sheimdal]

Guys,

I've confirmed that its something on my end; ZOOM is working flawlessly!

We've completed the Wordpress integration, without building a seperate HTML page for the search function. Your advice on a couple of key issues made all the difference! Now that its done is surprising how easy it was.

You guys should put together a Wordpress Plugin for integrating ZOOM. The reason I suggest this is two fold; first, available search software for Wordpress sites are TOTAL CRAP in almost all cases. Second, I've read that something like 15% - 17% of all websites are based on Wordpress. Huge Market! If you could make integration simple you would own the market!

Thanks for all the help!!!!!

Scott