Custom fields used by Search – part 2

  • Resolved TxFig

    (@txfig)


    2 years, 8 months ago

    This directory is a list of people who will do “bee removals” in our state (these people are the members of our organization). It is viewable to the general public. When someone comes to our directory, they are (almost always) looking for someone who can help remove problematic honey bees. In order to pare down the list of our members to the people who can serve these public people the best, I need to make the visitor FIRST make 2 search parameter choices:

    The 1 choice was in a previous post (it got too long, so I split them up).

    The 2nd choice deals with location – Texas is a BIG state. Our members, when they join, give us 2 pieces of information:

    1) a list of the counties they serve / operate in
    2) their HOME county (where the live and do ‘most’ of their work).

    Part 1 of this question:
    How should I setup the counties in the database?

    • 1 category that lists all of the counties as sub-categories (there are 256 counties in our state)?
    • 2 separate categories (one for the home, one for the list of counties served), again each with all 256 counties listed as a sub-category?

    The reason we have our members list the “counties served” separate from their “home county” is that when a visitor selects a county, those members who listed that matching county as their HOME get listed at the top; then the rest of the members who had it in the “Counties Served” get listed below.

    This is because some members simply try to list all 256 counties in the state, just to get their name to show up on the hit list more often. We want to be more fair – giving the “locals” a better display location.

    Part 2 of this question then becomes
    On the page where the visitors go to see the directory of our members, how do I ‘code’, the search?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Thread Starter TxFig

    (@txfig)

    2 years, 8 months ago

    This next part is FAR less important. More of a “cute idea if we can do it”….

    Part 3 of this question (assuming we can do Parts 1 & 2) is :

    Within each section, we would like the list of members to be RANDOM.

    For example, let’s say a visitor wants to see the people who can collect a colony of bees in BRAZOS County. Let’s say we have 5 members who listed BRAZOS as their home county, and another 10 who said they provide service there.

    The 5 people who listed it in the home county would be at the top, but the order of those 5 would be different every time a person came to the page. Then below those 5, the other 10 people would be listed, but likewise, the order of those 10 would be different every time the page was loaded.

    Plugin Author Steven

    (@shazahm1hotmailcom)

    2 years, 8 months ago

    RE: How should I setup the counties in the database? … 1 category that lists all of the counties as sub-categories (there are 256 counties in our state)?

    I suggest creating a third top-level parent category named “Counties” and then import all 256 counties as children categories.

    https://connections-pro.com/documentation/tools/#Categories-2

    This way, you can assign as many counties to an entry as needed.

    There is a beta advanced search addon that comes with the Pro Pack (on request). This allows multiple category searches. You could have two dropdowns, one for “Colony” and “Swarm” and the other for the “Counties”.

    This way a user could choose to list results for “Swarm” in the chosen county. The countries would be attached to the entries by areas served.

    RE: we would like the list of members to be RANDOM.

    You can use the order_by='id|RANDOM' shortcode parameter to list the results randomly.

    Please see Example 3 on this doc page:

    There are a couple of important notes shown under the examples that you should review.

    I can not think of a way to tie in a “home county” that would surface those Entries first regardless of display order, sorry!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • The topic ‘Custom fields used by Search – part 2’ is closed to new replies.