Items Manager - ver: 1.4

[mikeh]

What do you all think is the best way to allow easy modification of the search results page?
Right now, with the way its set up on the settings page, I imagine it can a bit difficult for the less experienced.

I'm currently modifying the I18N Search plugin to allow users to specify how the search result items are displayed. The user can supply a component to render one search result item. All fields will be available in the component - probably as variables, e.g. $title, $content, ... and $fields['my-name'] for custom fields.
To specify the component only an additional parameter to the search results call is needed, e.g.

Code:

(% searchresults tags=product component=my-comp-name %)

I suppose you can use a similar approach in your plugin.
(And a future version of the I18N plugin will probably allow you to index and search your items, too)

P.S.: I was and am still planning on creating a similar plugin, but using standard GetSimple pages and supporting multiple languages and search plugin integration. Like a custom fields on steroids plugin where you can define different custom fields for different types of pages. But so far you have been faster and are definitely leading in regards to a generalized items plugin :-)

Great idea on the search results.. I was thinking of something similar, but allowing it to be done through a template file, but a component type deal is better.

P.S: If you are developing something similar, I would be more than happy to team up I surely don't mind sharing the work and credit.

I was also thinking about using regular GS pages for this plugin, and originally (on my own websites before I made this into a plugin) that is how this script worked.. However, I found significant performance issues when the sites got very large and clients were putting in dozens-hundreds of rentals (items).

I was thinking about maybe separate folders inside the pages folder for plugins like these. That way it would be easier to work with for a search plugin. You would know that any folder inside the pages folder also need to be searchable.

What are opinions on this?