I do not believe
Hi there fellow WA'ers.
Great community we have here. From new born wannabe internet entrepreneurs right up to those who have cracked the industry and successfully created their own successful online businesses.
With all the wealth of information available to us within this community and so many prime websites bristling with all the latest add-ons and plug ins,
I STILL DO NOT BELIEVE that no-one here can advise me how to sort out a relatively simple, in my mind anyway, solution.
Hell, what I'm asking for is on this very site, yet no-one knows how to do it?
Go ahead - look at the top and you see a search function linked to a database of blogs, questions and training materials. Search what your looking for and - hey presto - you got a list of answers.
Now, just about every second site on the web based on the music industry has a searchable database. Search for a song, search for a CD or video and out pops the available list. Looking for a CD from a particular artist - hey - just use the search function - easy!!!
I DO NOT BELIEVE that no-one here at WA does not know how to install a searchable database onto a Wordpress website.
NOW - maybe this will get some attention - good, bad or otherwise - I don't know. If it's bad - so be it. The fact still remains that I DO NOT BELIEVE what I am asking for is so difficult.
WHAT I DO BELIEVE is that if no-one here can or is willing to help then my only other alternative is to hand my website over to a professional web developer who does know what they are doing. And that is a sad reflection on this community.
Recent Comments
17
SundanceKid, what you want to accomplish is not as simple as you think. The specific example you mentioned -- looking for a CD from a particular artist -- requires not only a custom set of tables in the database to store your CD-related data, but code has to be written to read from this data in a meaningful way.
The user interface involved in this is deceptive. You think you only need a search textbox on the page, type the words you want to search for, and voila, the results are back.
The reality is that:
1) Database tables need to be created in your database to store the CD-related data. (Requires technical knowledge)
2) a method of data entry input needs to be created to store your CD-related data into the database; this will be a data entry input screen of some type with Create/Read/Update/Delete capability for the data you enter. To create such a screen, programming knowledge is required.
3) Once the tables and data are in place, and somebody types something in your search box, programming is once again necessary to not only read the data from the database, but also in the formatting of the search results in a visually presentable way.
As you can see, you will need a software developer to do this for you. Specifically, you will need a developer who has knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL, at the bare minimum.
I hope that helps you understand why you're not getting responses -- you need a software developer.
Thanks Grendall - this is exactly what I needed to know 3 weeks ago. I've spent countless hours searching the web looking for s/ware and plug ins etc. Could have saved me a lot of anguish.
Grendall - this is the closest I've found so far.
Custom Searchable Data Entry System.
It's a Wordpress plug in.
It seems to be close, but for some reason It will not load my csv file.
Any ideas?
I appreciate your help so far, thank you.
Was it giving you an error message? Your .csv file, was it generated from Excel? Or did you hand-construct it?
I googled that plugin. From what I gather, it uses a .CSV file for its backend. As long as you realize that the bigger the .CSV file gets, the slower all searches from and updates to that file will become.
If it won't load your .csv file, did you pull up your .csv file up in a text editor to check if you got the format right? It's supposed to contain only values separated by commas, e.g.:
23,43,26,74,34
87,233,47,27,22
Another thing to watch out for is that if your plugin is running in WA servers, note that it's running on a Linux operating system, and the plugin might be expecting a text file created in a Linux environment. If you created your .CSV file in a Windows/DOS system, the carriage return character at the end of each line of data in your .CSV will be different from that used in Linux. I'd expect the plugin to check for that and make the necessary conversion, but if it doesn't, that could cause the loading problem.
Hello Rhys, are you talking about installing a search bar on your website? Because you already have a search bar for your website. It comes already coded with your WordPress Theme.
It's in your widgets area. That search bar will allow visitors to search your site. I don't see your website listed on your profile page.
1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Hover over "Appearance"
3. Click on "Widgets"
4. Look for the "Search" widget (usually on the left column)
5. Drag and Drop the "Search" widget to where you would like it to be placed. It depends on the functionality of your Theme.
You have side bars and header sidebars. You'll just have to play with it to see where it lands--so, keep checking each time you drop it.
I hope this is the information you need.
Keith Weaver
It depends on what you are trying to do Rhys.
If you want your visitors to be able to search the content that you have added to your site then a search widget should do the job. Try Appearance->Widgets and drag the Search widget into your sidebar.
For something a little more capable, there are search plugins like Better Search and Search Everything that you can install.
If you want to create your own database on your site, that is a much more complicated thing. Here is some training that might help get started. Create Your Website’s MySQL Database I hope that helps,
Tom
Marion Black posted about how to create a Word Cloud. This is a stylish way of enabling visitors to navigate your site. The link is Word Clouds Hope this helps.
Um well that is too technical for me, I've asked for some help for your issue and hopefully someone will be able to assist you soon! Install a searchable database onto a Wordpress website
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There are many threads directly on Wordpress discussion sites about this as well that you might want to check out.
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-searchable-database
In cases where we have needed this, we have always done so in a very custom sort of way but there are likely some solutions out there either paid plugins/themes...there are 10,000's of plugins and just as many themes out there, there is bound to be an out of the box solution that comes close to what you want.
Thanks Kyle - I'll check that out. But as I have said, I have spent countless hours trying to find this dang thing. Yet out of those 10'000's of plug ins you would have thought I 'd found it by now.