Extra fields to be searchable on the first search page, before a category is chosen

[Greg H]

I have created a few extra fields and I need them to be searchable on the first search page, before a category is chosen. In my case the extra fields do apply to ALL categories.

As it is, extra fields only show up in search AFTER you choose a category and click search.

Help with this would be greatly appreciated, I have discussed this in another thread but got nowhere.

Thanks

[suzkaw]

If you open the search template file and locate the javascript at the top. Right above the closing {/literal} tag try to add this:

type=1; //1 is the id of the preselected category.
displaySec(type);

I haven't tested this but it should point you in the right direction.

[Greg H]

Thanks for the reply.

I just tried this with no luck.

I assume that all this is supposed to do is preselect all(assuming I used all the category id's) my categories for the search.

If so, I guess it would be ok, but it would be better to have the extra field search boxes show up on the first page as well.

Would I be right in assuming that I would need to do it for every single category ID?
If so would it be like this..

type=1; //1 is the id of the preselected category.
displaySec(type);
type=1; //1 is the id of the preselected category.
displaySec(type);

or like this..
type=1; //1 is the id of the preselected category.
type=2;
type=3; //etc
displaySec(type);

Thanks

[Greg H]

Thanks to MAffO for solving this for me.

Cheers

[kampbell]

Is there anyway you could maybe PM or post here on how you were able to search extra fields on your home page? I have been having trouble with this for a while now. I have also been trying to have a search for all the categories in extra fields and have it searchable on my index. Thanks in advance.

[Greg H]

Maffo did some recoding for me to make this happen, I dont know the details but I do know he did not simply modify the way extra listings are handled, he hard coded it.

You would need to ask Maffo for full details, but understand he will not do this for free, it takes time and money.