[wp-hackers] Page searching examples [was: 2.4 planning discussion]

[Travis Snoozy]

On Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:17:35 -0400, "Doug Stewart" <zamoose at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 10/3/07, Travis Snoozy <ai2097 at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> 
> > Because a user knows -what- he's looking for, and it's search's job
> > to tell him -where-, not the other way around? ;)
> >
> 
> This isn't the user's call, it's the theme devs' call.

... I'm utterly flabbergasted. Momentarily speechless. Shocked and
confused. Allow me a brief bit of whitespace to recompose myself.



It absolutely is the user's call. The theme should not dictate to the
user "this is what we'll search; if you want anything else, you have to
hack me." Quite the contrary, the user should be able to say "I want
these things to show up in seach by default," centrally controlled by
WordPress and consistent across -all- themes.

I should not have to pick a theme based on where it decides
"relevant" content might be hiding. I simply cannot fathom why anyone
would want something different (aside from wanting to fit into the
existing technical constraints inside the system).

> Placing a page_search_results() and a post_search_results()
> template tag in a search results page would return (theoretically)
> the results of searching on a string in both the posts and pages.

But they wouldn't be unified, and there wouldn't be
forwards-compatibility with a unified, relevance-rated search if/when
one ever crops up.

> That's why I clarified with "context type" instead of content.  I
> meant content in the "blog vs. pages" sense, not the ".txt vs. .rtf
> vs. .mp3" sense.

Who cares? Text is text is text. Content is content is content. I'll use
a self-centered example: if I search for "In Series" on my site, the
*project page* does not show up. That page should be at the top of the
list. That's how search is supposed to work. Right now, the page doesn't
show up at all; people trying to find that information will just get a
string of release posts that probably aren't what they're really
looking for. The fact that the most relevant content is in a page is
completely irrelevant (ironically enough ;).

Splitting things up into "posts" vs "pages" does not help the user as
far as I can see. If you can give a scenario where that's not the
case, please -- enlighten me. 

-- 
Travis 

In Series maintainer
Random coder & quality guy
<http://remstate.com/>