[Tim]

Hi,

My client is requesting a better search functionality on his site that uses the Connections plugin.

Specifically he is having issues with state abbreviations.

I assume it is not possible to have a search that equates OH with Ohio, that’s advanced stuff which is no problem (tried explaining that).

However I believe that I can use a field like Notes to input the state abbreviation, and then maybe hide it to keep everything clean? Also to really make it work I would need to enable an exact match sort so that OH doesnt return results of words with “oh” in them for instance.

Do you have any suggestions on how to approach this issue? Am I missing an obvious solution to the problem?

Thanks so much!

Tim

[Steven Zahm]

@ Tim

The problem with search just two characters is that by default mysql will not search for words 4 characters or less {maybe it’s three characters], so even adding it to the notes will likely not have an effect on results. A couple suggestions…

On the Connections : Settings admin page under the Advanced tab there is a Links section, enable the Region option. With that enabled, the states in the addresses will not be clickable and when clicked on the list will be filtered by that state.

Another option would be to add a new text widget to the sidebar. Add links for each of the states. Something like this:

http://domain.tld/directory/region/state

I hope that helps.

[Tim]

Thanks, that is very interesting about the mysql queries, I did not know that!

I think I will go the route of adding a sidebar with state links, or a drop down at the top.

Thanks so much for your help!

[Author]

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