Website with very detailed search -possible?

Hi!

MODx is all new to me, and I think it’s very intresting. I’ve used TXP a lot ’cause it makes easy to develop accessible and visually intresting sites. This framework seems to have those benefits and much more too. So I’m asking following: (but please notice, I’m not a coding guru, more familiar with css/html - so this can sound stupid...)

Is it possible to develop a system about musical instruments where content creators could fill dozens pieces of information, like: type of instrument, material, colors, mics, prices, famous users and so on and on. End-users could then search all instruments with maching information.

- could this be easily done with MODx
- how much the input form for new content can be changed (to make it possible to fill all of those things for every item)
- or could information be imported some else way, (say, content creators could fill them first locally, like some spreadsheet-format for example.)

If someone have words of wisdom for me, I woud be pleased to hear

Input is simple with MODx - you need to set up a bunch of Template Variables (TVs), and these will then appear on the Edit Document page (if your document uses the relevant template). Famous Users is probably the fiddliest without coding experience.

The biggest issue you’d have right now is the search. There isn’t yet a search snippet that lets you search through TVs.
However, a drill-down approach is fairly straight forward to arrange.

Hey - thanks for a very quick answer. OK, I could have that information feeded to the system straight via CMS, and in page templates I can decide what kind of information is showed in articles returned from search?  (All the data is not necessary to be read but should be there to make search detailed).

But I didn’t understand this

Quote from: PaulGregory at Nov 21, 2006, 08:13 AM

However, a drill-down approach is fairly straight forward to arrange.

Because english is not my strongest skill, could you little clarify that please.

What if there is, say 50 detail content creators could fill for each item, is this actually reasonable to do this way? I mean, the edit page would come quite massive too?

To drill down through a series of folders, for example, on a desktop means to go through the hierarchy of folders to find a specific file or to click through drop-down menus in a GUI.

I basically mean users could click on Wind Instruments and then Silver etc to find the instrument they want.

Drill-down - maybe I should use Google sometimes... I surely make this sound complicated, sorry I’m kind of investigating how far we can do this for example with MODx and what is the point where we need help for coding, if any. Because it’s no reason to invent existing solutions again. And with TXP even I can do quite complex templates without actual "coding-knowhow" at all. And this seems quite similar, but even more flexible system.

So if our users should have a possibility to select only things they want, any time, any order, from any bigger "unit" (color, material, price...) - that wouldn’t be easy to achieve? Like real estating companies have their pages where we can search luxurious lofts in the middle of the City for under 800e / month All the search options are in one page, user can select only options they want to... This is not possible? Or surely possible but not easy?

Extremely possible, and fairly easy if you’re familiar with coding, but not already done.

Hi,

you should have a look to ditto beta 1.1.2 and ditto machine.
Both are in beta for now but could be a good start.
ditto offers filtering abilities on TVs.

:-)

PaulGregory - thanks for this information. So maybe we can start creating the basic version of the site. ("Simple search" for items, like alphabetically). And when the base is designed it would be relatively easy to someone with coding knowledge to make the advanced search page.

One more thing, more from ui-side, would it be possible to use kind of "Ajax-style" in the query - "Q&A units" (materials / price information / etc / ) would be in separated sections and results would be continuously updating when switching between "units"? I’ll quess -yes.

heliotrope - now I’ll check your path - thanks to you too.

Yes. Search isn’t really useful until you have 100+ things, but rest assured that you can go ahead inputting information in TVs and in the future someone can sort out a snazzy Ajax search system based around your data. You should be able to get someone here to sort it out for a modest payment.

You really are quick! This sounds good! Thank you, very much!