Sorting results

[rugrotts]

I know the search engine sorts by relavance but that would be confusing to my audience. This is a pedigree dog site and most dogs in the database have a prefix. If there are 50 or so dogs listed from one breeder whose kennel prefix is Reichmeister, it would be difficult for people to search unless the second part of the name is alphabetical. i.e. Reichmeister Anfang before Reichmeister Honig. Is there any code that I can put in the head of my search page to be able to do this?
Thanks

[Ray]

Hi,
There isn't a feature that does exactly that. But there's a number of alternative solutions that'd help your users find the full name, that you can consider.

1) The autocomplete feature allows you to specify a list of words and phrases that will appear (in the order you specify) as the user types in the search box. This can suggest to the user what to search for, and should help them make a better query instead of having to require the user to look through the list of search results (which isn't ideal, even if it's alphabetically sorted).

Here's a quick example of the autocomplete feature in action, with the two pedigree names as autocomplete options:
http://www.wrensoft.com/test/reichmeister/search.php

I indexed the first site I found that contained these names, presumably it's yours. But it's just a quick example. There's obviously more configuring that can be done to exclude the sitemap from appearing in the results and the navigation menu items, etc.

2) The custom meta field feature allows you to specify meta tags on the pages in question, and then you can configure the way to search them.

More information here: http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support...ta_fields.html

This allows for alot of custom-database-like search criterias, without the need for a custom database. For example, you can specify a birth year, or search by the registration number specifically.

For example, if you place this tag on a page:

<meta name="PedigreeName" content="Reichmeister Honig">

You can then configure Zoom to display a dropdown search box showing all the possible values for the user to select. (select the meta field type as "Dropdown text" in Zoom)

There are various types of meta fields. If you select a "Text" type, you can allow for a "Partial text" search method. This means you can do a search for "Reichmeister H" and it will find the above.

I'd suggest playing around with the Free Edition and these features to see if any of these features could suit.

[rugrotts]

Hi, you landed on my own website. The website I am using the search engine for is www.rottweilers-on-line.com I have customized the search pretty well but the profiles that I want to search for have to put in a folder and sub folders so of course if you search with** they come up as indexes. Don't think I can stop that. I have got it down pretty well as I want it except for the alphabetical thing. Search for Reichmeister on this website to see what I mean. People who will use this website would be breeders so they would always search for the kennel prefix to see the dogs under that prefix.

[Ray]

Indexing with Offline Mode (instead of Spider Mode) would make more sense for you, since you are only indexing static HTML files within certain folders. This would eliminate the problem with your "index" pages showing up too.