I'm happy to announce that a SearchBot for the SMF forum component has ben released. This SearchBot will ONLY work if Joomla! and SMF share the SAME database. The searchBot will allow your users to search your forum messages from the comfort of the default Joomla! search box.

This has been tested with Joomla! 1.0.11 Stable, SMF 1.1 RC2, and the JoomlaHacks Joomla-SMF 2.0 RC2 component.

Since this Mambot doesn't access any information using the bridge component, it should work without any difficulty on any SMF installation that shares a database with Joomla even if the SMF installation is not in any way bridged with Joomla!. Currently, the non-bridged option is not available but will be added soon.

The mambot comes with the following configuation options:

• Select the section name of your forum search results.


• Set a limit on the number of forum search results to return.


• Set the SMF database table prefix used.


• Control how the mambot determins which search results which users may see.


• Control whether to allow the raw BBC from the forum to be displayed or converted to plain text.

The SMF SearchBot 1.0 BETA File can be found here.

This topic will act as the support and feedback area for this Mambot.

vujsa

Post edited by: vujsa, at: 2006/11/13 11:38<br><br>Post edited by: vujsa, at: 2006/11/14 19:08

didn't work on our site

when clicking search it kind of jumps out of the site (looks a bit like unwrapped) and doesn't give any results at all.

(attached screen shot)

same happened to me as the above poster when i had another smf search mambot like http://www.princeclan.org/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,79/Itemid,91/ installed. unpublishing that and this bot started working.

i have one problem tho. the search result urls drop the ItemId=XX part and it makes joomla change it to Itemid=99999999 which breaks the template.

also the search limit is actually the set number+2

Well, I'm sorry to hear that the bot isn't working for everyone. I was concerned that there may be an issue or two when used on a production site which is why I chose to release the bot as BETA. I didn't expect any complete failures of the bots like described above.

I was aware of the Itemid issue which was a a decision I made to make the Mambot easier to write.

The Itemid refers to the menu item that the user followed to get to the page they are currrently on. As a result, the Itemid can be different for different users if there is more than one way to get to a page on your website. As far as I can tell, the Itemid is used exclusively to determin the path taken to get to the page being viewed. As a result, if the Itemid is left out of the url, the pathway information will not be displayed on that page nor any of the child pages.

I'm not sure how dropping the Itemid can disrupt your template but I'll look into adding the Itemid back into the url.

As for the search limt being +2, I hadn't noticed that. That is Joomla! code issue. The Joomla! search script handles the search result limit and provides for the option to be added to the Mambot script. I have no control over that number except I suppose I could subtract &quot;2&quot; from the limit before it is sent to Joomla!.

I'm guessing if the old SMF SearchBot was being used on your site then you are NOT using the Joomla-SMF Forum component (Simple Machines Forum) by JoomlaHacks as I believe that that searchbot only worked with the Joomla-SMF Bridge (Simple Machines Forum). Things may have changed since I last tried but it required the index.php to be modified to work and the JoomlaHacks version didn't like it at all!

I am guessing if two or more of the same searchbot is installed that there will be a problem and as explained above, unpublishing the old bot should fix the problem.

Be sure to include the SMF component that you are using when you report problems in the future.
Bug Posting instructions can be found here:
Instructions For Posting A Bug Report.
And Bug reports can be posted here:
Handy PHP Joomla Extensions Bug Reports

Please keep me informed about any problems that you may have with this SearchBot

vujsa

i am using the orstio's bridge 1.1.6.

i use joomla+smf as wrapped and the forum has its own template where i have removed parts i dont want to show while the user is on the forum. dropping the itemid makes joomla use the default template when user clicks on the search result topic link instead of the one i specifically made for it.

other than this the search works as expected

joomla 1.0.11
smf 1.1rc3
jsmf 2.0 rc1

Theres no other search bot that looks likely to conflict. I disabled the other ones on the site (virtue mart &amp; community builder) and it didn't resolve the issue