Anyone Using Wrensoft 'Zoom Search'?

Author	« Topic »
pauld Ecommerce Template Expert USA 500 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 10:36:53 Hi, with the fast approaching demise of the paid version of Google Site Search, we're hurriedly looking for an alternative Search feature for our web store. The free, ad supported version of Google Site Search isn't an option because those results will show competitors' ads. The ECT search feature doesn't seem like an option because much of our useful site content is on pages that aren't generated by the Cart. Subscription based search services (like AddSearch, Algolia, etc.) all seem to cost hundreds of dollars per year unless you install a crippled version. I noticed that some pages on the ECT website (like https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/ectsearch.asp) use search software called Zoom Search from www.wrensoft.com. Their paid-up license for a site our size is $119. Does anyone have experience with Zoom Search, good or bad? Can anyone suggest a better alternative? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. - Paul D.
Andy ECT Moderator 95440 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 10:40:32 Hi Paul I'm reasonably pleased with what we use. The ability to have different search sections is handy but the auto-complete wasn't great so we don't use it. Andy Please feel free to review / rate our software
pauld Ecommerce Template Expert USA 500 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 10:43:57 Thanks, Andy.
Marshall Ecommerce Template Guru USA 1916 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 14:28:21 I use Zoom Search for several of my non-ECT sites and have been very pleased with it. Marshall CENLYT Productions - ms designs Affordable Web Design Custom Ecommerce Designs Responsive Websites Cenlyt.com
pauld Ecommerce Template Expert USA 500 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 15:15:14 Having purchased Zoom Search, I notice that its software distribution expects you to upload their 'search.php' file in your web root. Given that ECT also has a 'search.php' file, I suspect you'd need to rename that Zoom Search file before uploading to avoid an ECT Updater overwriting it. Any thoughts about how best to handle this? In other words, are there any tips or pitfalls when it comes to renaming and uploading that Zoom 'search.php' file? Thanks in advance.
dbdave ECT Moderator USA 10468 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 16:24:08 Ect updates do not include the search.php file so that would not be an issue.
Marshall Ecommerce Template Guru USA 1916 Posts	Posted - 01/04/2018 : 17:39:19 quote: Given that ECT also has a 'search.php' file, I suspect you'd need to rename that Zoom Search file before uploading to avoid an ECT Updater overwriting it. I created a folder called "search" and put all the Zoom files in it so there is no conflict with anything. Just make sure the path to the search file is set to search/search.php in your search form. Marshall CENLYT Productions - ms designs Affordable Web Design Custom Ecommerce Designs Responsive Websites Cenlyt.com
pauld Ecommerce Template Expert USA 500 Posts	Posted - 01/07/2018 : 11:31:21 Marshall and Andy, thanks for this. For now we've got 'Zoom Search' working on our website. I think the search results look surprisingly nice when displayed in the custom page we created. Another unexpected benefit: if you create a custom page to display the search results ('chsearch.php' in our case), you can use a Custom Segments filter in Google Analytics, filtering on that Page name, to provide very detailed reporting of who searched for what terms, when, from what locations and devices, etc. This definitely seems like an improvement over Google Site Search reporting. However there is one unexpected issue: The Zoom Search <search_template.html> file uses the following PHP code, which seems to trigger W3C Validator errors because it creates duplicate <body> tags in our custom Results page: <body onload="if (document.getElementById('zoom_searchbox')) {document.getElementById('zoom_searchbox').focus();}"> <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> </body> On a hunch we changed 'body' to 'element' as follows, which still triggers W3C Validator errors, though a little less severe: <element onload="if (document.getElementById('zoom_searchbox')) {document.getElementById('zoom_searchbox').focus();}"> <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> </element> Can anyone suggest the right PHP syntax for that <search_template.html> page so that the results can be displayed inside the body of our standard page, without W3C Validator errors? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. - Paul D.
Andy ECT Moderator 95440 Posts	Posted - 01/07/2018 : 12:04:13 Hi Paul I'm not sure how you can do that but I had a couple of similar problems and their support pointed me in the right direction - it might be worth giving them a try if you don't get any feedback here. Andy Please feel free to review / rate our software
insight ECT Moderator USA 4479 Posts	Posted - 01/07/2018 : 19:08:36 Replace your existing <body> tag with their event handler <body onload="if (document.getElementById('zoom_searchbox')) {document.getElementById('zoom_searchbox').focus();}"> Leave the closing </body> tag where it is almost at the end. That should do it. Peter ServeLink Professional ecommerce web hosting for ASP & PHP https://servelink.com Take a look at our image upload/resize tool for the ASP cart https://servelink.com/clients/cart?gid=7 Edited by - insight on 01/07/2018 19:08:56
pauld Ecommerce Template Expert USA 500 Posts	Posted - 01/09/2018 : 05:22:04 Hi, it turns out that the solution in our case was to have only the following in our 'Zoom Search' <search_template.html> file: <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> Removing those other lines from <search_template.html> also eliminated those W3C Validator errors, since our Zoom Search Results page, built from our standard website page, already has <body> tags. - Paul D.
Andy ECT Moderator 95440 Posts	Posted - 03/06/2018 : 02:53:19 One other benefit I didn't mention before is that when you spider your own site, not only does it find any broken links (as you would expect) it also turns up unmatched tags - I didn't notice this before but it's handy for keeping the code clean. Andy Please feel free to review / rate our software
Andy ECT Moderator 95440 Posts	Posted - 11/22/2018 : 03:26:16 I only discovered today that it also optionally generates a sitemap, sitemap.xml which is very handy. Andy Please feel free to review / rate our software
Andy ECT Moderator 95440 Posts	Posted - 02/22/2019 : 03:28:37 I only realized today that it doesn't spider extensionless URLs by default and that option has to be turned on under Scan Options > Scan files with no extensions Andy Please feel free to review / rate our software
Andy ECT Moderator 95440 Posts	Posted - 03/19/2019 : 04:17:17 A word of warning about updating. We just updated from v7 to v8 and the search does appear quicker now. What I didn't realize is that v8 is a completely new set of files and not an update as such, which means that all the configuration settings need to be copied back from the previous version. As v7 isn't overwritten you can open the old indexer alongside the new one, go through the options and copy the settings from one to the other. Make sure you take back ups of all the search files before implementing the new version. Andy Please feel free to review / rate our software
	« Topic »