A couple of general questions

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi there,

I have a couple of general questions. We have had zoom running on infomed.ch for years and are quite happy with it but we would like to make a couple of small adjustments.

- We still seem to be using v7 of Zoom. Is it necessary to migrate to v8 or can we continue using v7 for the time being?
(I think we tried to switch once before but found it was easier to remain on v7)

- Question re. Weighting; Is there any way to weigh content higher/lower based on a date? We have content that is quite old that should definitely be lower in the SERPs than the newer content. Is the default weighting in the SERPs always 'relevance'?
(should we try to exclude older content from being indexed if we feel it has too much prominence?)

- Is there any way Zoom can handle typoes and misspellings (and alternate spellings), and suggest correct spelling?
I see there is a Synonyms tab in the configuration options but it seems that wouldn't be the right place for misspellings. Let alone trying to anticipate and list misspellings.

- Finally, we have auto-complete enabled in the configuration, but I don't remember it ever working. Does the front end in the browser need any special triggers for this to work?

Thanks very much
Philipp Gysling

[David]

Is it necessary to migrate to v8

If you don't need the new features, technical support, compatibility with latest PHP releases, potential security fixes and other bug fixes, etc... then you can continue with V7.
Don't fix what isn't broken.

weigh content higher/lower based on a date

No, at least not automatically.
You can sort by date however.
You could also script your pages to boost the new pages with
<meta name="ZOOMPAGEBOOST" content="5">
and old pages with
<meta name="ZOOMPAGEBOOST" content="-5">

any way Zoom can handle typoes and misspellings

Yes, there is an option to provide spelling suggestions. It is a check box on the "Search page" window.
It isn't prefect however. So you might want to combine it with Synonyms.
One limitation is that it will only ever suggest words that are in your index and works best on English language. (it doesn't have a built in English, German, Japanese, etc... dictionary)

You can also manually add common mis-spellings to the index like this
<meta name="ZOOMWORDS" content="melody, mellody, melodie, tune, song">

Does the front end in the browser need any special triggers

Once this is enabled, the next indexing run will create an additional .zdat file ("zoom_autocomplete.zdat") and include a "zoom_autocomplete.js" file and "zoom_autocomplete.css" file. The latter two files can also be retrieved from the "Extras" folder manually (via "Tools" menu -> "Open extras folder"). These files need to be referenced from your search page.
These files must all be uploaded to your server along with your other index files (Zoom will do this automatically if you use the built-in FTP feature).

[phil@infomed.org]

Thanks David,

We will look into adding the ZOOMPAGEBOOST attributes w/ the weighted values to our pages.

I will also try the "provide suggestions" option, I had not noticed that before. I am not sure using the 'synonyms' is really feasible (or even ) in our case as our content is in German and medical, so there could be a ton of misspellings. It seems like a big project to keep a misspelling inventory for medical terms.

The auto-complete files are uploaded to our web server and I've added the references to the search page:

<!-- zoom auto complete -->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://www.infomed.ch/zoom/zoom_autocomplete.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.infomed.ch/zoom/zoom_autocomplete.js"></script>

But for some reason no auto-complete happens in the browser. I wonder if it is because we adjusted the search form to match our look and feel.

Best
ph

[David]

Is the search page public, we can take a look at it?

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi David,

The site is here: https://www.infomed.ch
In the header of every page there is a "Suche" toggle (top right corner), click on that to open a search field. After you submit your search like that you end up on the SERP with more search options.

Best
Philipp

[David]

We had a look at the site. It is highly customised compared to our base template. So that makes it more complex as we aren't familiar with your code / site.
You are also using an old release of Zoom, which we no longer support.
There are at least 2 issues. One is that the drop down list appears far to the right, off screen. So that is likely CSS or an issue with the old V7 code.
The other issue is that results aren't being returned to the drop down. So maybe a bad URL (or again something in V7 that was already fixed in V

So sorry we don't have a solution.
If you wanted to upgrade to V8 with support, we can take another look.

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi again,

Thank you for looking into this.

We had a look at the site. It is highly customised compared to our base template. So that makes it more complex as we aren't familiar with your code / site.
You are also using an old release of Zoom, which we no longer support.

Yes, hence my question earlier about having to change versions!

There are at least 2 issues. One is that the drop down list appears far to the right, off screen. So that is likely CSS or an issue with the old V7 code.

So that I understand correctly, you're referring to a drop down of auto-complete options? And this is on our page but just not visible, ie. off-screen, right now?

The other issue is that results aren't being returned to the drop down. So maybe a bad URL (or again something in V7 that was already fixed in V

But the drop down is not populated?

I see that

zoom_ac_dropdown

is mentioned several times in the scripts on the SERP page, but I don't see an element with the ID of "zoom_ac_dropdown" on the page.

Do you have a link to a working example w/ the dropdown, maybe I can figure it out based on that.
Or maybe I have to change versions after all. I am just trying to take the route that will be most straight forward.

Thanks!
ph

[David]

There is a working example of auto-complete here
https://www.zoomsearchengine.com/search.php

And this is on our page but just not visible, ie. off-screen, right now?

Yes. If you make the browser window something like 8000 pixels wide you can see it.
Here is a cropped screen shot from my dual 4K monitor setup.

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi again,

I now see the div that should be populated by the js script, thank you for pointing that out.
A lot of events seem to be triggered on the search field (zoom_searchbox), maybe that is the issue why the div does not get populated.
Is the auto-complete data pre-loaded? Is it in some sort of referenced json file?
Just trying to understand what's going on. I don't want to just upgrade and then potentially run into the same issue again due to the customization.

Thanks
ph

[David]

Autocomplete word suggestions are stored in the "zoom_autocomplete.zdat" file. That file needs to be on the server. But it should be auto-generated and auto-uploaded to the server, if you have this feature turned on.

The Javascript file, zoom_autocomplete.js, is also required. As for all JS files, they run on the client.

As you type, the JS makes a AJAX call to the web sever to get the word suggestions, they are returned back in XML format and parsed into the drop down list.

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi again,

Still trying to troubleshoot this, so I have more questions!

- I notice on your example page that you link to the jquery library. Is jquery needed to make the auto_complete work and if so, is the version critical?

- I also notice that there is a dropdown.js script referenced on your page. Is this script necessary?

- I see in our code that the div "zoom_ac_dropdown" does not populate (compared to yours) when I type into the "zoom_searchbox" ... it says"the requested URL was not found on the server". So it seems like the event(s) triggered in the search field run(s) into some sort of path issue.

Thanks
ph

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi again,

I've done a bit more digging ... so when I try to trigger the auto-complete the "zoom_ac_dropdown" div shows a 404 message:



When I look at this 404, it seems to be triggered by a non-existent search.php:



On our server we have:

https://www.infomed.ch/infomed_search.php
and https://www.infomed.ch/zoom/search.php
but not https://www.infomed.ch/search.php

I saw in the zoom_autocomplete.js file, on line 223, that search.php is referenced as the openURL variable, but I assume this is correct as it accesses the search.php script in the /zoom/ directory.
Where else could www.infomed.ch/search.php be referenced from?
I couldn't find anywhere else.

Thanks
ph

[David]

jquery and dropdown.js are not required for auto-complete. They are used on our site for the navigation menus and not the search function.

URL should be set automatically. Via this code

var ZoomAutoComplete_URL = "/cgi-bin/search.cgi?zoom_ac=1";
.....
var openURL = "";

if (typeof ZoomAutoComplete_URL == "undefined")
    openURL = "search.php?zoom_ac=1";
else
    openURL = ZoomAutoComplete_URL;

I believe the ZoomAutoComplete_URL variable is auto-populated to the correct value (based in your Zoom config settings).

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi again David,

Thank you for your guidance through this ... I am making some progress.
So the openURL variable needs to read 'zoom/search.php?zoom_ac=1' (instead of 'search.php?zoom_ac=1)
I was able to test this by manually overwriting the variable. With that the ac items do populate proprely:



However, I was not able to figure out where in the Zoom configuration I can adjust this. I think right now it will re-upload the auto-complete js script every time it indexes and it will default back to 'search.php?zoom_ac=1'.

Also, as you can see above the positioning of the dropdown is way off to the right and too far from the top.
It seems the style attributes for 'top' and 'left' also get set in the auto_complete js script (lines 130, 131). I can manually overwrite these as well (to 0 and 40) and then the drop down appears at the right place, more or less:



The same problem occurs on indexing though. I assume these manual changes will get overwritten.
Do you have any advice?

Thanks!

[phil@infomed.org]

Hi there, just following up on the message above. I would still like to get this fixed.
Is there anything we can adjust (either in the configuration or in a source file) that would ensure that the manual changes described above to not get overwritten everz time the site gets indexed?

Thanks!