One of the first modules that I would like to add to my Web site is a search
module and obviously search module does exactly what it sounds like.
It allows you to have a blue box where you can type in the words and it will
search your Web site for those matching words.
And inside of Joomla! we actually have
two kinds of search, so I want to acquaint you with what those are.
So we'll go ahead and jump into the backend of Joomla!
and I am going to add a search module to my Web site.
So I am going to go to Extensions>Module Manager.
This is always where we go to create any kind of modules inside of Joomla!.
And I am going to make a new module by clicking the New button and this will
tell me all of the module types that are already installed for me.
As you continue to work with Joomla! one of Joomla's! big
strengths is the ability to have some externally available extensions that
you can go to the Joomla! extensions
directory, you can go do a bunch of research and you can find
additional functionality for Joomla!
You can install that on your Web site, so you may have a whole bunch of modules
in your Web site that might not originally come with Joomla!
But the modules that we have available to us right now do come with Joomla!
we haven't installed anything additionally.
I will show you how to do that in a later video, and all of these modules
that are listed here are the choices that we have for installing something on the Web site.
Now as far as search goes, there are two options to choose from.
There is Search and there is Smart Search.
Obviously, Smart Search sounds so much more interesting and so much better;
let me tell you what these are.
Searches are regular old search, something that's been available in Joomla!
for a very long time.
It's your conventional search box you type something in, it does a search.
The Smart Search works more like Google search where you start to type and it
gives you a bunch of guesses, as to what it might be that you're typing in.
The drawback to Smart Search though, at this point, is that it's currently working
great with Joomla's! core content.
But as you add more extensions to your Web site, the current Smart Search module
is not necessarily designed to go in Search content in any of these third-party modules.
It will only search the content within the core of Joomla!.
Now that might be fine if you are building a very simple Web site and pretty much
all of your content is located in Joomla's! core,
but if you add something like a CCK, a Content Construction Kit like K2 or Zoo
or if you add something an elaborate calendar for example, like JCal Pro or
if you add a shopping cart like VirtueMart or Redshop, then you might wind up
in a situation where you are going to need to have some sort of search capability
for those additional big areas of your Web site and Smart Search might not
necessarily be able to search those areas.
Third party developers have to write an extension in order to leverage smart search.
And many of them are still catching up with that.
So I am just going to use regular search for right now, so I am going to click
on that to put in my Search box. I always need to give my module a title.
That title will be Search, but I don't have to show that title on the screen,
and in fact, I will just Hide it, because it will already say Search in or the
box itself, what I put it on my screen.
The place I am going to position this, remember we could go into that Map that
we pulled up from the Template manager; that will show us all of the module positions.
They are also available here in this dropdown and if you scroll on down through the dropdown,
to the Protostar module positions;
you don't want to use these at the top for Beez3 that is the other template
that comes with Joomla!
and it has somewhat different template positions than Protostar.
I can scroll on through this, and I can choose what I want to use
for positioning the Search box.
So I actually have a position here called Search, it's in position-0.
If you remember from the last video, it was sort of in the upper right corner
of the page, which is pretty much where I want my Search box.
So I am going to go ahead and select that.
These are sort of the basic settings here within a module and you will go
through these every time.
You will always need to give this a title, whether or not you want to show that title
and the position for that particular module.
The other information here is Optional and you may or may not wind up using it.
Basic Options will give you some options that you might find useful
for configuring this module.
For example, I might want to set a width for my Search box, which by default is
this sort of generic width of 20, it's sort of tied to the number of characters,
but not exactly, so just think of it as the number.
If you want it bigger, make a number bigger than 20, or if you want the box smaller,
make it a number smaller than 20.
The Box Text is what text will show up inside of the text box.
If you leave it blank, in English anyway will show up as Search...
or you can type in any other text that you wished to have Show.
A Search Button would put a little button after it that would say, something
like Go, or Search or something. You can turn that on or off.
You can position that button to the right or the left of the box and pretty much
in English, which is a left to right language;
you are going to put that button on the right side of the box.
For those of you who work in right to left languages, you might want to put
that button on the left side of the box.
You can also have your Search Button been an image if you wish.
So these are all things that you can go ahead and configure.
What I am going to do is I'm going to turn on my Search button, I'll leave it
on the right and the text will be Go, because my text in the Search box will say Search.
I don't want to say Search... and then have my button also say Search;
it just seems kind of redundant.
There are always a few Advanced Options that are available here.
I'll go through these in another video and then finally there's a Menu Assignment.
So on what pages would you like your Search box to appear?
Well, Search is a fairly important navigational element.
I'd like it to appear in all pages of my Web site, so I'm going to leave my
Menu Assignment exactly as is and I am going to say Save & Close.
Now when I go to the front end of the Web site and I Refresh, I will have a
Search box that will appear up here at the top.
If I like that Search box to be smaller, I could change the size of that Search box,
right now it's set to 20, I could make a smaller number which will narrow up
this box a little bit and I enabled the button to appear here.
I could certainly turn that off as well.
But that is how you include a Search box inside of your Web page.