Broadening Search or Different Template for Search Results?

Please bear with me, this might be a long post as I gather my thoughts and try to explain myself properly.

Scenario 1:

Initially for main staff directory I set it up to show just the members of management (defined by a specific category), with the following shortcode:

[connections order_by="department|SORT_DESC,last_name|SORT_ACS, first_name|SORT_ACS" enable_search='TRUE' page_limit=500 enable_category_select='TRUE' show_profile_link='FALSE' image="photo" image_width=73 image_height=90 show_phone_numbers='FALSE' show_org='TRUE' card_width=420 show_empty_categories='FALSE' category=2]

This also worked to help me sort within categories in order to show the Head and Deputy Head first (department being an unused field I’m only using for sort order) and then the rest of the staff within that category in alphabetical order of surname.

However, in this scenario, the keyword search does not work properly, since the category is specified, and thus it seems it will not search outside of that category.

Scenario 2:

So the second thing I tried for the main directory was to list two different instances of the shortcode, as follows:

[connections order_by="department|SORT_DESC,last_name|SORT_ACS, first_name|SORT_ACS" enable_search='TRUE' page_limit=500 enable_category_select='TRUE' show_profile_link='FALSE' image="photo" image_width=73 image_height=90 show_phone_numbers='FALSE' show_org='TRUE' card_width=420 show_empty_categories='FALSE' category=2]

[connections order_by="last_name|SORT_ACS, first_name|SORT_ACS" enable_search='FALSE' page_limit=500 enable_category_select='FALSE' show_profile_link='FALSE' image="photo" image_width=73 image_height=90 show_phone_numbers='FALSE' show_org='TRUE' card_width=420 show_empty_categories='FALSE' exclude_category=2]

This allowed me to achieve a scenario in the main directory whereby all management was listed prior to all other staff who followed in alphabetical order of surname, and without repeating the management through the second shortcode. However what happens then is when a search is performed either through the keyword search or category select, I get the results repeated through both instances of the shortcodes, which isn’t necessary. But because the search results rely on the same set of shortcodes as what the main directory uses, I can understand why it happens.

Searching through the forums, I found info about home_id and thought it might help in this case. I followed the instructions of creating a new results page and adding the ID of that page to an additional home_id parameter in both shortcodes on the page containing the main directory. The results page contained a variation of the first shortcode:

[connections order_by="department|SORT_DESC,last_name|SORT_ACS, first_name|SORT_ACS" enable_search='TRUE' page_limit=500 enable_category_select='TRUE' show_profile_link='FALSE' image="photo" image_width=73 image_height=90 show_phone_numbers='FALSE' show_org='TRUE' card_width=420 show_empty_categories='FALSE']

However this did not seem to work.

So I have two questions about how I might potentially deal with this:

1 – In Scenario 1, is it possible to extend the scope of the keyword search so that it searches outside of the category specified in the shortcode? This would be ideal and simplify everything, requiring only one shortcode instance.

OR

2 – In Scenario 2, is it possible to have search results displayed on a different page – a different template as it were – which contains a single shortcode with different listing parameters?

• This topic was modified 9 years ago by Trevor Wilcox.
• This topic was modified 9 years ago by Trevor Wilcox.
• This topic was modified 9 years ago by Trevor Wilcox.