Search Facility on existing site

manonthemoon

I have an existing brochure site with approx. 500 items.

Each item has a description, price & image.

I have used a scroll down list so each item can be found. On each page I have shown approx. 6 items

My client now wants a search facility as well as the scroll down list. I would like that the search would bring up each relevant item and NOT each relevant page. How do I go about doing this?

The Corinthian

Realistically we’re talking about a Database.

I've seen some smaller developments using JavaScript, but TBH, you’ve too many items to make that practical client-side. Hence you really need something on the server to store/search the items and from which you pick out a recordset of selected items. Your requirements are such that you could do it with something as basic a flat-text file, but I suspect that given potential creeping feature-itous’ your client is likely to be looking for, you’re better off going for a Database.

Question is, which one and that’s largely dependant on your platform and how much your client is willing to shell out.

manonthemoon

What type of database are recommended. I can forsee new items being added in the future

The Corinthian

As I said:

Question is, which one and that’s largely dependant on your platform and how much your client is willing to shell out.

miju

on my site www.irishmusicnetwork.net which is hosted on CarrigHost they actually provided me with a search engine indexing program called Entropy have a look around and see if you can find a dowload somewhere

mneylon

Originally posted by the-raptor
on my site www.irishmusicnetwork.net which is hosted on CarrigHost they actually provided me with a search engine indexing program called Entropy have a look around and see if you can find a dowload somewhere

That's probably a text search, unless I'm completely mistaken. The problem here sounds like it's more related to products (or did I misread things?? Must get new glasses!)

manonthemoon

You are right blacknight.

I have just found a site which is exactly what i (And my client) are looking for. Its the sam hire search facility.

www.samhire.ie

The Corinthian

[edit]Upps, just realized, that's not your site, just an example.[/edit]

You appear to be running the site on Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000. As such your DB options are realistically Access (unreliable and will fall over if there’s any real traffic to the site), MySQL (shareware on Win32 - while free for *nix - also can’t say if its performance is up to anything on Win32) or MS SQL Server (good but pricey). You would also have to check with the host, Esat, about DB and ASP support.

Another option would be to transfer your hosting to a LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) set-up, which would not be a major issue given it’s presently just brochureware.

Either way, you’ll need to get some development done. I doubt if you’ll find any free scripts out there that will even come close to meeting your client’s requirements.