ocPortal Tutorial: Searching your website

Written by Allen Ellis, ocProducts

As you add content to your website, it becomes increasingly important that you are able to find your content when you need to. ocPortal includes a 'search' feature, which allows you to search your entire website for content that you specify.

Table of contents

ocPortal Tutorial: Searching your website

Simple searching

The search block

By default, there is a 'search' block that sits in the right-hand menu of the "Site" zone in your website. This is the easiest way to use the search. There is a text box where you can type what you're looking for. The "Search Content" button will then search your entire website and forums for the content that you've specified. The results will be displayed in the main window, if it is able to find any.

Detailed searches

If you would like to do detailed searches, there is a "More" button in the search content block. Clicking this will bring you to the advanced search page, which has several options:

Search For

Detailed searches

This is the text box where you type the content that you're searching for.

Boolean Search

Choosing to do a boolean search will make several more options available:

Content must contain all of these words
Content must contain one or more of these words.

These two options are self-explanatory. After selecting "Boolean search", you also gain the use of several additional options:

"Put quotes" around words that you would like to occur in sequence
Put a '-' before a word to shun it
Put a '+' before a word to require it.

Search only titles

With this option checked, ocPortal will only search titles of the content it's searching for. If you are searching your forum, it will only search topic titles. If you're searching downloads, it will only search in the downloads name.

Author/Submitter

In this field, you can type the name of a member on the website. If you do this, ocPortal will only look for entries that this person has submitted.

Submitted within the previous

In this field, you can set a cut-off date, to not show entries that are older.

Sort by

In this field, you can specify what order you would like your results shown in.

Search the following content types

Placing a checkmark beside each content type will cause ocPortal to search for entries in these content types. Clearing the checkbox will cause ocPortal not to search in these locations.

Google search

The Google search will do a search of the site using the index of the Google search engine. Upon filling in this separate form you will be redirected to a Google results page.

Advanced searches

Performing an advanced search for a specific content type

Many forms of content allow advanced searches, which allows you to search underneath a chosen category. For members and catalogues you may also perform template searches. An advanced search limits you to that individual content type, and the interface is reached by clicking one of the 'Advanced' links on the detailed search page.

Searching from the Forum

The search button on the forum

To initiate a search while in the forum (our own OCF forum), you need to click the "search" option on the forum. This will vary from forum system to forum system, but if you chose to install ocPortal's built-in-forum, the search button will be located in the bottom-right of the page. [see screenshot].

Concepts

Boolean search: A search carried out by testing for exact word or phrasal matches to a number of criteria