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Update to the book review site

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 3:07 am
by Omphalos
Hopefully some of you noticed a few months ago when I mentioned that I have been doing some major updates to my book review site. The first of the big changes has now been implemented (although there are a few small bugs to work out). Take a look at the link here:

http://www.omphalosbookreviews.com/inde ... arch/books

This is noted as "Tag Search" in the menu bar on top of the site. I have tagged all of the books so that users can search the lot of them for different things. For example, if you want a post-apocalyptic book about cyborgs, just check those two boxes under "Themes." If you want short stories about the environment, just check the appropriate boxes under "Themes" and "Format," and you will see what I have written about so far.

Reviews will continue, and the site will continue to evolve too. If you have any suggestions, comments, gripes...whatever, just let me know. I want to make a fun site, so please let me hear what you think about how I can make it better.

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 9:11 am
by GamePlayer
Hey, I've been asked to build a search function for my website, but don't know how. How did you do yours and is it relatively straight forward?

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 1:01 pm
by Omphalos
It is definitely not straight forward. The search feature that I have works on three different principles. You can search author, title, publisher or year, which searches the characteristics of the books as I enter them; You can search for any text in the reviews; and you can search tags, which is the most intensive. Right now the results you get are "any," which means that if you click on more than one tag, you will get any book that has any of them. In the next few weeks I should go live with "all," so that if you want a Proto SF book on robots that is part of a series, that is the only result you will get (instead of every book that has "Proto SF," "robot," and "series.")

What was it you wanted to do, and what language is your site in? This one is mostly in php.

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 4:36 pm
by GamePlayer
Mines in HTML. I wanted a search function that would basically search the whole site. A visitor types in "sniper" or some such word and then it will show them a list of results.

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 5:50 pm
by Omphalos
Ah. Sorry. This one is in php and its specifically designed to search data here, not a multiple page website. But when we were starting my brother contemplated putting in a drop-in HTML thing off the net. If I were you I would PM Ragabash (that's my bro - He is here and at Jacurutu) and ask him for a link. Maybe it would work for your site.

Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 8:38 pm
by SandChigger
GP, what kind of scripts, if any, can you run on your site? Perl, PHP???

I used to use a free, open-source PHP search program on one of my sites, but I don't know if it's supported any longer. I'll have a look around and get back to you.

I think there are some free CGI scripts written in Perl floating around out there, too.

(More later....)