The search plugin extends the joomla core search. It allows to search the items database.

not available in the 1.7 version (yet?)

Plugin params

The item links

The joomla search results page links back to the dataitems menu, the parameters 'Add to...' allow to customize the link:

Add id to link

This will add the unique item id to the link, the target page will only show this single item. This option has a drawback: the item id is not preserved when  the item changes, for example one of the Select fields gets a different value.

Add title to link

This adds the title to the page url, displaying possibly multiple items.

Add menu-query to link

This selection field as defined in the menu configuration. The next parameter (Menu levels) defines how menu fields are shown.

Link to merchant

This option allows to use the affiliate link, redirecting directly to the merchants store

Setting the target menu Menu Id

The items in the database do not have a structure, the structure is defined in the menu configuration. Therefore a target menu id must be set in the plugin configuration.

Searching multiple menu's

There is a catch here, assuming a site has multiple menu's each with a different main selection ( the first selection in the menu configuration), for example:

menu - 1 has a Select0 on 'Widgets'

menu - 2 has a Select0 on 'Gifts'

So you can't use the (single) search plugin to search both menu's structures.

If a site as multiple datafeed menu's you might want to define an extra menu without a main selection, pointing the search plugin to this menu

searching the title and description

By default the plugin will not search the title and description of the items, since this might be an expensive operation. On small sets of items or a proper server you can enable the search in the plugin configuration: 'Search Title' and 'Search Description'