Displaying a Search Page

To display the a page that will all your visitor to enter a search and display the results, add a new internal link menu item to your desired menu.  Select Finder from the list of components, then Finder -> Search.  The result will be similar to the following screenshot.

Menu Options

This page has the following options available:

• Search Filter - Optionally use a search filter for this page. The results, and advanced search options, will be governed by the constraints of the selected search filter.
• Date Filters - Optionally show the start and end date filters in the advanced search (not all content supports date filtering).
• Advanced Search - Toggle whether users should be able to see advanced search options.
• Expanded Advanced Search - Toggle whether the advanced search options should be expanded by default (if displayed).
• Suggest Similar Words - Toggle whether similar words should be suggested when no results are found.
• Keyword Relevance - Toggle whether the keyword relevance score should be displayed with search results.
• Result Description - Toggle whether the description should be displayed with search results.
• Result URL - Optionally show the associated URL for the item (like Google does).
• Description Length - Description text for search results will be truncated to the specified character length.
• Result Labels - Toggle whether Labels should be displayed for search results. This option requires JXtended Labels to be installed (sold separately).
  

Advanced Options

• Allow Empty Search - Only if a filter is selected, allow an empty search string to initiate a search within the filter constraints.
• Search Order - The order in which to display results.
• Show Feed - Optionally show the syndication feed link.
• Show Feed Text - Show the associated text with the feed, otherwise just the title is shown in the feed.

For assistance with creating and maintaining Joomla menu items, see the official Joomla documentation:

• http://docs.joomla.org/Screen.menus.15
• http://docs.joomla.org/Screen.menus.edit.15

Customization

This page may be customized using the Joomla layout override system.  You need to be able to create new files and edit them on your web hosting site using FTP or other tools that are available to you (contact your web host if you need more information).

All file paths are relative to the directory in which Joomla is installed.  When looking a files you need to create, it is assumed that you will create the necessary folders if they don't already exist in each case.  The directory default_template refers to the template that is set as the default for your site.  Please replace this name with the actual name of the template directory.

To create the layout override for this page, find the files:

/components/com_finder/views/search/tmpl/default.php

/components/com_finder/views/search/tmpl/default_form.php

/components/com_finder/views/search/tmpl/default_results.php

Copy the files you wish to customise to (respectively):

/templates/default_template/html/com_finder/search/default.php

/templates/default_template/html/com_finder/search/default_form.php

/templates/default_template/html/com_finder/search/default_results.php

Make the desired adjustments to the source code to the new file you created and then save it.  Your changes should be reflected when you refresh the appropriate page. 

Please note that you only need to copy the files that you need to change.  For example, if you only want to format the list of search results, you only need to copy the default_results.php file.

Be aware that while the layout overrides are not touched when you upgrade this extension, changes to the master versions may occur which add or change functionality.

For more information on layout overrides, see http://www.theartofjoomla.com/topics/layout-overrides.html