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The Search Plugin

Plugin Name: search

Availability: zlite Zap Calendar Basic Zap Calendar Standard Zap Calendar Pro

Purpose: To search for events using Joomla's built-in site search capability.  With this plugin, event title, location and description are included in the Joomla site search.

Configuration:

This plugin installs under the Joomla search plugin group.  The search plugins customize the way a word search is done within Joomla.  Joomla comes standard with search plugins for content (articles), weblinks, contacts, categories, sections and newsfeeds.  With the Zap Calendar search plugin, events can be searched too.

Once the plugin is installed, enable it under the Plugin Manager in the search group.  Disable other search plugins that may be enabled but are not needed.  For example, if you do not wish to include newsfeeds in the search feature, then disable the newsfeeds search plugin.  The Zap Calendar search plugin has the following configuration options:

Search Limit : The maximum # of event matches to return

Date Format: Format of date to display in search results

Search Results: You can specify to return all events, future events only or past events only

The Joomla search feature is available as both a module and component. The module allows you to provide a search box anywhere on your site (the front page, for example). To use the search module, go to the module editor and either add a new search module or enable the existing search module if available.  Place the module in a location ("left" for example) and specify the pages where the module is to appear ("all" or select appropriate pages).

When using the module, it is recommended to also include a search page in one of your menus. Although not mandatory, adding a search page with the search module will allow your search results page to be included in the bread crumb menu and you will also be able to edit additional search parameters in the search page setup.  To add a search page, open the appropriate menu in the administrator and click "New". Select "Search" as the menu type, then edit the search page settings, including menu name (i.e. "Search" ) and parent menu.  Click "Save" to add the search page to the menu.