Hi Azti, thanks for your note – always happy to have feedback from users so I know what people want from the plugin and can improve it.
I’m trying to understand exactly what you mean…
The WP Catalogue plugin is built on a simple custom post type. So currently the default WordPress search will turn up any matching search terms from either the WP Catalogue product title or description, and will display the results exactly like it would display a match found in a standard WordPress Post.
You wrote:
One of the most critical things I need is for a user to be able to search for a Catalog item, by Product name or by something in the description, and have it return the WP Catalog rendered page.
I don’t think I’m quite understanding what you’re after. What do you mean by “WP Catalogue rendered page”?
Thread Starter
azti
(@azti)
Maeve,
For example:
If you go to my site and search on this Product Number: TG8038-7P-1
You get the content pointed to by the below url. This content does NOT contain any images from the page, I.E. the spec sheet returned in the second link below this one.:
http://www.united-cooling.com/?s=TG8038-7P-1
Rather than the content pointed to by this one, which is the WP Catalogue URL for that product:
http://www.united-cooling.com/wpcproduct/tg8038-7p-1/
Conversely, searching on a term that will yield a standard WordPress Page. The string: “Jiulong”, submitted to WordPress Search, yields a URL: http://www.united-cooling.com/?s=Jiulong whose content is Identical to the what is rendered by the actual URL for the page: http://www.united-cooling.com/juilong-brand/ Both return the image that is part of the page. However, a search for a Product Number only Returns the Product Description without the associated Image(s).
Another problem that I just now discovered is that strings contained within the Catalog Product Description are not found. For example, this string, form many of the product descriptions: “Shaded Pole And External Rotor Induction Motor” should yield a number of our Products. It yields none. I did some research and now find that this is a [lack of] design feature in WordPress. Worpdress search only searches posts, not pages and comments… I guess I will be looking at a plugin, or custom code.
Regardless, why is it that WP Catalogue’s images are not returned in a search for a product number?
Thread Starter
azti
(@azti)
Maeve, I managed to hack in a search form, in your pro version that we just purchased, at: themefiles/single-wpcproduct.php just below line 83 and in wpc-catalogue.php just below line 182.
As to my questions, in the post above below:
—o—
You get the content pointed to by the below url. This content does NOT contain any images from the page, I.E. the spec sheet returned in the second link below this one.:
—o—
Please never mind… lol… I am overworked… I realize that the search results will not be the actual page for the content, but output including content around the search term. I did not realize that the link to the original Post/Page/Comment (In installed Relevanssi, by the way), and specifically for wpcposts, is at the top of each block of content returned from a matched item in the search.
So never mind the above…. However, I would highly suggest that you include a clean way to add a sophisticated search capability to the Catalog with a form displayed both in the sidebar of the Catalog Pages as well as in the Product Pages themselves.
Thanks again.
Thanks for reporting back Azti. Definitely some food for thought. I’ll certainly note this thread down as one to come back to when I have a chance to improve/add search to the plugin.
Thanks again
HI All,
I’d echo this request – easy to use search capability, limited to the catalog items is important, and having the results displayed with the picture as in the grid is important too. It’s really a key-word filter as much as a search. Being able to maintain all the catalog formatting, but have it filtered by presence of keyword would be great.
