After you've successfully completed the installation and configuration, you may want to spend a little time customizing the search mambots and modules to provide a better, more intuitive experience for your end users. In short, rename or unpublish mambots so that users can more easily fine what they are looking for.
Here is some more detail of our favorite Advanced Search tips & tricks.
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Rename your site mambots: This is an easy trick; simply view the Site Mambot list in the Joomla! backend and filter the list to dispay just the 'search' mambots. For example, you might find an entry for 'JCal Pro Search mambot'. This is the mambot that allows events in your JCal Pro calendar to be searchable.
However, this mambot name 'JCal Pro Search mambot' is now displayed to your end users when they use Advanced Search. To make this more meaningful, edit the mambot name to 'Calendar Events'. Now, when users use Advanced Search, it will be clear what content is being filtered. Repeat as appropriate for all installed search mambots.
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Reorder your site mambots:
Depending on the demographic of your site users, some content is likely
to be of higher priority than others. For instance, if you have a
church site, calendar events may be more important than content
categories. Reorder the mambots using the 'up' and 'down' arrows in the
Site Mambot list in the Joomla! backend. If you made 'JCal Pro Search
mambot' the first search mambot in the list, your search results will
show any calendar events matching the search criteria before results
from other search mambots lower in the list.
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Unpublish unused mambots:
I don't know why, but i rarely ever use the weblinks feature in
Joomla!. Why then would I want to give my end users the option to
search for weblinks when none exist? Unpublish any such mambots to
reduce clutter and confusion for your users. This will help them find
the content they are interested in more readily.
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Create pre-filtered search boxes:
Depending on your site, you may not want a person searching all content
areas from all pages. For example, perhaps you are using the Exposé search mambot
to search your photo gallery. You can create a copy of the search
module which searches ONLY your photo gallery and is only displayed on
your gallery page.
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Select the Advanced Search module (not
the Advanced Search Selector module) from the Site Module list in the
Joomla! backend and chose 'Copy' from the toolbar at the top-right of
your screen. This will return you to the Site Module list where you now
see a 'Copy of Advanced Search' module entry.
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Edit the 'Copy of Advanced Search' module to change the name ('Photo Search' for eample). In the 'Mambot(s) to search' field, enter the following:
bot_expose_search
This is the mambot type as listed on the Site Mambots list in the Joomla! backend.
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Select the appropriate Menu Item/Link which will display the module and adjust the module position as required.
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Save your changes taking care to publish the module.
Multiple mambots can also be specified by listing multiple mambot types as a comma-seperated list.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 01 January 2008 )
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