[Royale Dziak]

Here’s what I have:

As you see here you can select the category (parent or child) and search it..

Here is what I want:

I want to separate the searches by parent. I want to search only “select Product” or “select Service” or “select rental equipment”

I have about 400 children categories (so you can see where adding them all into one search engine would be interesting for the person who isn’t sure what the name of what they want is…

Thanks SOOO much in advance!!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Royale

I see exactly what you want to do, with the current version of the Widget Pack, it can not be done … with the forthcoming category widget in Widget Pack 2.0 however you can very easily crerate multiple category widget for the sidebar

oh, wait…. reading this again, I think I misunderstood…

Is this question related to the Widget Pack?

The category widget in the Widget Pack simply output a list of links of categories. If you’re familiar with the category widget for WordPress; same thing.

I have a feeling that you’re asking for multiple category search. For example, cMap has a searchable category drop down … are you actually asking about have multiple searchable category drop downs?

[Steven Zahm]

@

Please do not reply to the auto replies … generally I do not monitor those accounts at all. Thanks!

A copy of your reply here so it this makes sense when I have to refer back to it.

I want to be able to search children but have the search bar only hold
one parent at a time.

For example:

I want to rent a truck, but I don’t remember the name of the truck or
the companies that rent them.. so I go to my handy dandy website which
has three pages one says “rentals” I click on this page (or tab) and
type in truck.. and a list of all the categories with the word truck
in it drop down, I click on fire truck and all the companies that rent
fire trucks show up in the directory.

Does that make sense?

I have my categories broken up in tabs, here’s the site you can see
what I mean:

http://pesa.minervadevsites.com/membership/directory/

I only have one company fully set up with categories for now, but I
want to implement the full 300+ categories- not until i get the search
figured out though..

[Steven Zahm]

@ Royale

My first suggestion, do not use the tabs. You are essentially putting three directories on one page. It’s doable … but depending on what you do, you could make the page slow to load.

So… if I understand this right, you basically want to divide the categories between three pages so you do not have 300+ on one page to search thru, right?

Since you’re using cMap, you can choose to limit the category selection to specified root parent categories. See this FAQ. I think this will get you what you’re looking for.

[Royale Dziak]

I see what you’re saying for loading the directories causing a slow down (possibly). However here’s the workflow User Experience I was asked to recreate:

User comes to the site: clicks on directory:

User chooses Parts, services, or rentals

User puts in a keyword to search for and it drops down with a list of the children categories under the parent they’ve already chosen.

User chooses from the list and is directed to a page with all the companies that have that category.

Basically – they have something similar already (http://pesa.org/membership/directory) However your plugin is by far much more aesthetic and you give the ability to edit your own companies and you have so many more, better options (which is why I went with yours). I just need to nail down this search feature and I am ready to put it live for them.

The biggest issue is not having to muddle through the 200+ products before getting to the services category, if that makes sense. I mean one search for all categories can lead to a long drop down… a long long drop down.

[Royale Dziak]

However – might I add I work with plugin developers all the time asking silly questions and pushing the edges of what I should be able to do and honestly, you are awesome. You are quick at responding, understandable, easy to read. You don’t inundate me with a plethora of php to try and understand.

I truly appreciate developers like you. Thanks for being awesome!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Royale

Ok, I see what you’re trying to accomplish.

re: tabs
Sure you can do this… but, I urge strongly against it. See how the category drop down barely shows on your page. The cause is the initial tab has a width of 0 so the drop down inherits that width. After the page is completely shown, then the width of the tab set. Since the code for the tab and the code for the drop down do not know about each other the width for the category drop down can not be changed from 0. Now, this can be worked around, but the point I hope to make is you may come across all sorts of little things you’ll have to work around or live with. If I may suggest an alternative solution… Use the the pages as I suggest and in place of those tabs add links to those three pages. Same feel as what you have now, just accomplished with different tools.

re: User puts in a keyword to search for and it drops down with a list of the children categories under the parent they’ve already chosen.
This solution I gave a link to will be exactly what you want to split up the category list. Add these as root parent categories; “Products”, “Services” and “Rental Equipment”. Put all the relevant under each. Then do as explained in the FAQ.

So under your “Products” tab use this shortcode:
[connections category='3' enable_category_by_root_parent=true]

Under the “Services” tab use this shortcode:
[connections category='2' enable_category_by_root_parent=true]

Under the “Rental Equipment” tab use this shortcode:
[connections category='4' enable_category_by_root_parent=true]

I truly appreciate developers like you. Thanks for being awesome!
Thanks for the kinds words! If I may… If you have a moment, I would truly appreciate a review as they really do make a difference. Many thanks in advance!
https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/connections

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