Store Search Modules - Miva Merchant Modules

Modules to help configure and expand the options offered within the search page of your Miva Merchant store.

Miva Merchant Modules » Store Search Modules (7)

Use caution when considering any modules from modStop. Their support has been reported by umpteen Miva Merchant users as suspect and worse. Some of their modules are simple and shouldn't require support. Please contact us with any questions concerning them or their modules.

1. Search Manager Viking Coders / Miva Central

This module provides your store with a more configurable and robust search page. It permits you to offer your customer the option to search categories and attributes and to limit their search to particular fields in the Products database. Searches can be made case sensitive, restricted to searching only the entire phrase, and made to use either AND or OR. In addition, the module provides for the separate configuration of keywords for your products and those keywords can be included in the search. The module supports the Viking Coder's Additional Product Fields Manager module and you can provide your customers with the ability to search the fields that you have configured for your products. All of the configurable options, including the particular fields to search on, can selectively be made default options and hidden from your customers. In this way you can restrict the search to only those fields you want your customers to search in.

The module comes with two distinct admin interfaces. One provides for the simple configuration of a default layout for the search page and display of results. For those familiar with HTML and looking for a specific layout, there is a template based configuration option which provides for complete token and template based control over the layout of the search page and results listing. Support is also provided for Third Party modules in the same manner as my Category Page Templates and Product Page Templates modules.

A sampling of the module's features:

• Can be configured to replace the standard Merchant Search link and will use the same search button. So you can have the standard search link instead point to the Search Manager search page
• The search page can be linked to from a static link with a link of the form:
  áááhttp://yoursite.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=SRCHM&Store_Code=storecode
• Customers can search the categories for their search terms and the results are displayed above the product results (in the standard display format; they can go anywhere you want with the template formatting).
• Customers can restrict the search to find only the entire phrase they entered by surrounding the search terms in double quotes. Eg. "Clown nose" will find only those products which contain the exact phrase "Clown nose"
• Keywords can be saved for each product and category and those can be used to search in. To search the keywords for the products is an option for the products. The keywords are searched automatically for the categories. In both cases a tab is added to the individual category and product screens so that the keywords can be added.
• You can redirect customers who add products from the results listing either back to the search page or to the basket.
• All of the buttons (eg. "search", "add to basket", "previous", etc.) are configurable w/ images and alternate text.
• When using the Template formatting option, you can use tokens to add drop down select lists with terms your customers might want to search for. They can then search for those with a simple selection from the list.
• When using the Template formatting option, you can provide the customer with the option to sort the displayed results ascending or descending by product name, product code, or product id.
• When using the Template formatting option, you can use multiple search fields to prompt your customer to search for multiple terms. For example, you could provide a field for "title" and a field for "author" to prompt our customer to narrow their search
• Ability to search category headers and footers.

Version 3.x Available

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Compatibility: OpenUI Versions: 4.x, 4.14.x and Above (Available Compiled)(OpenUI Required)
Other Module Compatibility: N/A

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2. Power Search Weiland / Miva Central

The Power Search module is a plugin module which implements field specific, keyword searching within a Miva Merchant 2.x storefront. License is for ONE mall. Within that single mall, it can be used in multiple stores without additional license.

The purpose of powrsrch.mv is to allow a customer to search one or more fields which are made selectable by the store owner. The store owner can choose any fields within the products.dbf structure to be available. If you have an altered products.dbf structure, it will even allow selection of those additional fields (see screen shot below).

You can also exclude a word or phrase. An example of an exclude word usage might be: You sell health food but want the ability for customers to NOT list ingredients they are allergic to. So in the product name field you might have Soup. Then if you have a field in your database called Ingredient the customer could check the name and ingredient fields for searching. In the keyword input they would put soup. In the exclude input they could put MSG. It would search both fields. If it found soup in either it would compile those products to the list. But if the word MSG appeared in either field, it would remove it from the list.

Specific category, if selected, allows one category only searches. This feature may be too intimidating if you have hundreds of categories as the pull down select would be quite long.

New for the compiled version is the ability to specify a price range for the search. Also, in the compiled version we added the ability to display links to numbered pages when the search results exceed the number of matches displayed on a single page. You can use OpenUI Tokens to place the search form in several locations in your store. You also have the ability to replace the default form with one which you design with your own html (for those who know how to write html forms). The alternate html form can also be placed at one of seven different locations on the storefront screen. You'll use the default form as a template and can then add your own layout to improve the look and feel. Also if you are using the compiled Power Search AND the compiled Tell A Friend module, customers can send the search string from Power Search to friends. The store owner also has the ability to allow customers to search the category headers and footers for the search word. Because this may slow the search, you should only use it if your store has a moderate number of categories, e.g. 100 or less. Faster servers may get decent search times with many more than that though. Added new search algorythms "Any of these", Exact phrase", and "Start at beginning". Store owners can create a list of words which will not be searched in the "All of these" or "Any of these" searches. These are words like a, an, the, and, or. It will not exclude those words in the "Start at the beginning" or "Exact phrase" searches. If you choose to use the "search single category" listing, you can modify that from the admin control panel and only list certain categories in the select list, but provide searches of all of their sub-categories. This top down search adds greater flexibility over how broad you will allow your customers to filter the categories. After going to the product page from a Power Search rendered search, a convenient "return to search" link on the product page will bring the customer back to the original search page if using OpenUI.

Power Search (version 4.63) has been tested with OpenDB (version 2.2) and is compatible. In tests by James at Copernicus, the Power Search improved the performance of the already, very fast, SQL searches.
118k products in the database, 2456 categories, two search terms "PC133 RAM"
- Normal Miva Merchant Search: ~60 seconds
- OpenDBv2 Standard Search: TT time=07s0620u
- OpenDBv2 Power Search (limit to code, name & desc fields and no category specific search): TT time=05s0259u

For store owners who have found their searches take too long, you can reduce the search time by only searching one or two fields. The Merchant default is eight fields, including fields such as weight. Now, how useful is that? Finally.... the store owner has control without editing the db.mv code library.

The total number of products found is displayed along with the list of products matching the search criteria.

In admin, you can view the log of search words/phrases which your customers have used. This helps you from a marketing standpoint to determine the most sought after products. Additionally, it helps you identify keywords which might be useful to include in the narrative descriptions or the meta tag for search engine submissions.

This module works with both the MMUI and OpenUI User Interfaces (versions 2.22-4.x). If using the MMUI, six edits in the mmui.mv file are required, and one optional edit if you want to remove the archaic standard Merchant, keyword search. If you have compiled Merchant (4.14 or newer) that requires editing and re-compiling, so for compiled Merchant, OpenUI is required unless you have the compiler license. If you are using the OpenUI, Power Search plugs into the OpenUI without editing OpenUI modules and there is no need for compiling in Merchant 4.14 and newer.

See the screen shot below, then check out the selected field search in our store. We have about 600 products in our store so you can get an idea of search speed on a moderate speed server.

The Power Search function can also be used for pre-defined form pulldowns in your store. As an example, the genre and decade searches on the left side of this screen search a specific field, with store owner pre-defined selections. This same technique can be used for things like manufacturer searches if you have a manufacturer field in your products.dbf.

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Compatibility: OpenUI Versions: 4.x, 4.14.x and Above (Available Compiled)
Other Module Compatibility: N/A

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3. Power Search v5 Emporium Plus / Miva Central

Search specific fields and sort results. Allow a customer to search one or more fields which are made selectable by the store owner. The store owner can choose, in the admin screen, any fields within the products database or the MIVA Merchant built in custom product fields database to be available. The Power Search module uses a mirror database of your products, custom fields and categories; much like the big search engines use. By creating a mirror before the search is made, many operations to join multiple databases togethercan be avoided, so the customer gets a much faster search. Customers can also sort the results on fields like name, code, price, cost, when they were added to the store, or the default display order the store owner established for productlists. The build of the mirror database goes quite quickly and is a maintenance procedure you will do periodically. The small amount of time you take to build the mirror will save your customers significant amounts of time in their searches vs searches which don't use an optimized mirror database. Buildingthe mirror is not required just because products are added, deleted, or edited; as those processes update the mirror automatically without needing a rebuild. See the install doc for details.

Category selectable. Customers can use the category selector to select just one category to search. The default is to search the whole store. You can use the built in token which lists all categories with one or more products in them oryou can build your own select list of only certain categories.

Multiple search types. The customer can select how they want to search the database. The default is to search for products where all (boolean AND) of the keywords entered are found in the record. The customer can broaden that search so that any (boolean OR) of the words are found in the record. They can search by exact phrase so that the words must appear in thesame order in the record as was entered in the search input. They can also search the fields where the data in the field begins with the search string. This is useful for things like finding all of the products whose NAME begins with a specific letter and allows you to have a list of A-Z links that implement that specific search.

Advanced pagination. The module can display the total number of products found which match the search condition. Additionally, the pagesare numbered, e.g. Page 3 of 20, when results exceed the configurable number of products per page. You can also display alist of page numbers and links to those pages so the customer can jump to the page they want to look at. This pagination is similar to that used in the Emporium Plus Category Manager module.

Product layout template can be customized. In the 'srch' page template, there is a "search results layout". If you are happy with that layout, you can copy and paste the contents of that template into the Power Search module's product layout template. You can then modify the layout in the Power Search admin screen.

Price range searching. While searching the price field might be useful in some cases, a more popular search is price range. Within the searchable fields section, the customer has the option of entering a low and high price to create a range. If left blank, the search will not be filtered by price range.

Tell a friend module interface. If the store is using the Emporium Plus Tell A Friend module, customers can send the search string from Power Search to friends. The link in the email will go to the same page of products that the customer was on when they clicked the Tell A Friend button.

Return to search page link. After going to the product page from a Power Search rendered search, a convenient "return to search" link on the product page can bring the customer back to the original search page.

Search log with admin report. In admin, you can view the log of search words/phrases which your customers have used. This helps you from a marketing standpoint to determine the most sought after products and possibly the need to carry a new product. Additionally, it helps you identify keywords which might be useful to include in the narrative descriptions or the meta tags for search engine submissions and even local searches in your store. As example, while you might have a product called flip flops, customers might be searching for thong sandals (which is the same thing). But if you had not used those words in your description, you may have lost the sale. The log can be purged in the admin screen to reduce its size as desired.

Optimized search of built-in custom product fields. This module does not require that you use a proprietary 3rd party module for the custom product fields. It uses the built-in custom product fields module from MIVA Corp, thereby ensuring compatibility with other 3rd party modules which use those same custom product fields. No need to go down that proprietary datafield path of no return. As example, the Emporium Plus Template Data Feed module can use the built-in custom product fields to populate feeds to just about any search engine and shopping index with those "special" fields those indexes require.

Live examples. We cannot link to our demo Merchant 5 store from MivaCentral so if you'd like to see a couple of the live pages demonstrating searches, please contact us for the link. You can check out the selected field search in our test store which has about 600 products with multiple custom product fields. Try some searches so you can get an idea of search speed.

Pre-defined selectors. The Power Search function can also be used for pre-defined select pulldowns in your store. An example of genre and decade searches are in the lower left column of our test store's storefront screen. It will search a specific field, with store owner pre-defined selections. This same technique can be used for things like manufacturer searches if you have a manufacturer field in your custom product fields.

Liberal licensing. License is for ONE domain/mall. Within that single mall, it can be used in multiple stores without additional licenses.

This module requires that you are using MIVA Engine v5.03 or newer. When you log into admin, you can see which version of the engine is in use in your store.

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Compatibility: N/A Versions: 5.x+
Other Module Compatibility: N/A

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4. Better Product Search LATU /

The Better Product Search Miva Merchant module improves upon the Miva Merchant's standard search functionality by - providing more search options, a summary of search results, and user friendly navigation that gives customers the ability of easily linking back to their current search results.

Customers can search for Products by Keyword(s) or Phrase, and select a boolean and exact phrase search options. Customers can select to search by "All Words" "Any Words" or "Exact Phrase".

Displays a summary of the search results.

Example:

Search Results: found 64 products
(1 through 10 of 64 displayed)

Each product in the results is numbered consecutively to help with browsing.

"Return to Search" link included on the Product Display screen, giving customers a user friendly way of returning to their current search results and browsing other products.

Demo available upon request. Installation and customization service available.

Price: $59 Upgrade Cost: $20 Upgrade Terms (If Any): N/A
Compatibility: OpenUI Versions: 4.x, 4.14-4.16x (Available Compiled)
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5. Extended Search modStop /

The Extended Search module adds an advanced search to Merchant. The search interface exists on a separate page from the regular search and can either replace the regular search link (configurable from within admin) or exist as a separate link.

The module adds the ability to search phrases, to choose to search w/ OR or AND, to limit the search to particular product fields (name, code, etc.), to search within results, and to make the search case sensitive.

Price: $45.95 Upgrade Cost: $0 Upgrade Terms (If Any): Terms
Compatibility: MMUI/OpenUI Versions: 4.x, 4.14-4.16x (Available Compiled)
Other Module Compatibility: N/A

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6. Super Search w/ Extra Product Fields v5 Latu /

Give your customers the superpower to find the products they are searching for. The latu.net Super Search with Extra Product Fields module provides superior search capabilities and results for your Miva Merchant 5 store. Boolean-style search can be by any word (OR), all words (AND), or the exact phrase. Search results can also be limited to a specific category. Extra Searchable Product Fields can be added - with administrative control of which fields are searched. Integrated, admin-friendly product import and export. Super Search demo screen is provided for administrative testing of search results.

Search by Keyword(s) or Phrase

• Product search can be by one or more keywords or by an exact phrase. An optional selection menu can be displayed on the search screen for selecting the search type.
• Boolean Search Types:
• At least one of the words (OR)
• All of the words (AND)
• The exact phrase

Search by Category

• Product search can be limited to a specific category.
• Search results within a category maintain the sorting order of that category.

Searchable Extra Product Fields

• Extra Fields can be Character, Number, Boolean/Logical, or Memo field
• Field lengths can be specified for Character & Number fields; memo fields have unlimited length
• Extra Fields can be included in the Product List Layouts of the PLST Product List, CTGY Category Display, or PROD Product Display pages
• No limit on number of Extra Fields

Search Fields

• Complete administrative control of which product fields are searched.
• For both standard product fields and Extra Product Fields

Search Results Summary

• Optional Search Results summary displays the total products found.
  
  
• Example:
  Total Number of Products Found: 186

Product Import & Export

• Integrated, Admin-Friendly Product Import and Export
• Complete administrative control of import & export fields
• Including standard product fields and Extra Product Fields
• Select which fields are imported & export and configure the field order
• Import/export configuration is saved
• Batch-oriented process allows for importing & exporting of very large data sets

Product Search Demo

• An admin-friendly product search demo screen is provided for testing search results.
• Search by keyword(s) or phrase
• Search by boolean type and by category
• Select sorting order of results
• Select which fields are searched

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7. Search Logger Wump Services / Miva Central

Information is POWER! The bigger the store, the harder it is to find things - and when people can't find something, what do they do? They SEARCH

With Search Logger you can see what people are looking for. You can use this information to: Change your product descriptions to include the words that customers use when looking for things and know what people are looking for. If you don't sell it then maybe you should!

Search Logger keeps track of all searchs made at your store through the standard Merchant Search Screen and gives you access to the results including: Date time, Search String, Result ( success or failure ), and Customers IP address ( so you can group searches by person )

You can view and reset this log through your Merchant Admin screen.

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Compatibility: MMUI/OpenUI Versions: 3.x, 4.x
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