Customizing the Search Center
MOSS 2007 provides the search components as Web Parts so that you can customize how and where search results are returned. This flexibility allows you to customize the search center so that results are returned in the most usable format for your organization and users.
The available search Web Parts are
Advanced Search Box: This Web Part enables users to find documents using various search criteria including words, phrases, scope, language, and document type.
People Search Box: This Web Part enables users to search for a person by name, department, title, responsibilities, skills, and memberships.
People Search Core Results: This Web Part displays the people search results and should typically be on the same page as the People Search Box Web Part.
Search Box: This Web Part contains the simple search box found on all portal pages by default.
Search Core Results: This Web Part displays the search results generated from the search box search.
Search High Confidence Results: This Web Part displays the special term and high confidence result sets.
Search Paging: This Web Part displays the search paging capability, so a user can scroll through multiple pages of search results.
Search Statistics: Displays search statistics, including number of results and duration of search time.
Search Summary: Displays search summary.
There are many ways that you can customize the search center to suit your organization. Some of the common search center customizations are
Creating a new search tab to search and display results for a unique display group
Modifying the number of search results displayed on each result page
Changing the layout of where best bets are returned
As a sample of customizing the Search Center, you’ll create a new tab to display search results for a display group. To do this, follow these steps:
1. | From the Site Actions menu on any page in your Search Center site, select Create Page and type a Title and URL for your new page. |
2. | Select (Welcome Page) Search Results Page in the Page Layout section, as shown in Figure 7.9. Figure 7.9. Creating a new Search Center page with the Search Results Page layout
|
3. | Click Create. |
4. | Select Add New Tab in the top section of your new page. |
5. | Type a tab name in the Tab Name field, your page address in the Page field, and Tooltip (optional) as shown in Figure 7.10. |
6. | Click OK. |
7. | Select Modify Shared Web Part from the edit menu on the Search Box [1] Web Part. |
8. | Expand the Miscellaneous section of the Web Part. |
9. | Type your page name in the Target search results page URL field, as shown in Figure 7.11. Figure 7.11. Modifying the Target search results page
|
10. | Type the name of your display group in the Scope Display Group field, as shown in Figure 7.12. Figure 7.12. Modifying the scope display group in the Search Box Web Part
|
11. | Click OK to close the Search Box [1] Web Part. |
12. | If you would like to return more than ten results per page, select Modify Shared Web Part from the edit menu on the Search Core Results [1] Web Part. |
13. | Expand the Results Display/Views section. |
14. | Type the number of results that you want returned in the Results Per Page field, as shown in Figure 7.13. Figure 7.13. Modifying the number of results returned in the Search Result Web Part
|
15. | Click OK to close the Search Core Results [1] Web Part. |
Tip
If you want to use a specific scope but do not want to show the scope dropdown in the search box Web Part, you can configure the Web Part to not show the scope dropdown and enter the scope in the additional query terms field in the query text box section of the Web Part. The display group term should be entered as scope: “scope name” where scope name is the name of your scope in the additional query terms field.