I also agree with everything suggested on this tread. Being able to search any document or page within the member's only area would be really valuable. Any solution here would be great.

We would like this too... search of website content and visible database content (such as events, member info, etc).

We want to be able to search anything in the member's only area based on keyword search, this would include PDF documents, word documents, html documents, etc. I think key word search would be sufficient.

What is the typical information you provide and expect people to find by search?

Yes, we really need search. One of our associations main goals is to provide information to our membership but, that info can get buried if there's no way to search for it.

We have about 500 different requests in our pipeline and for each release we review them based on number of user votes/comments - and technical feasibility for each.

Website text search is in the top 20% of requests so I expect us to implement it in the next few releases (which can be 6-8 months)

Like to add my voice to this topic.

I need to implement a decent search facility for "public to read, private to post", forums on WA. Am using third party tool (Zoom) but this suffers from the same problem as Google Search and other 'external' methods in that it indexes the whole page, menu items, footers etc., not just the message text.

The forum functionality currently offered is not at all comparable with that available elsewhere. BUT we do need to use Wild Apricot (rather than a separately hosted solution) as we want our Association members to be able to use a single sign on for all the web based 'members only' facilities.

Apart from search, there are no proper forum moderator admin facilities either, for example to move messages into an Archive area, or to stop new posts on a topic.

Wild Apricot have not offered an implementation timescale yet (as far as I am aware). Would be good if we could see some real commitment to this functionality, which many users clearly need.

All best

Colin

The ability to search the public and private forums is absolutely vital to us. I'm afraid I didn't think to double-check if Wild Apricot offered that capability because I think of it as being fairly standard these days.

Please do bump it to the top of your list.

We're a writers' organization and many of the posts in the private areas are to provide information, not just conversation, so being searchable is necessary.

James and everyone - thanks for your input. We do understand the importance of this feature and it is rising to the top of the development queue.

I have to agree with what others are saying regarding have a WA delivered solution to searching for content on WA public and private pages is a really important feature. I think this is something that is clearly very important to your customers and really should be brought up to the top of your to do list.

We have also used the free google search tool which works, but clearly falls short. I guess the complexity is if you offer a tool that searches both public and private pages at the same time, someone who is not a member might find a document in the members only area. Since they aren't a member, we would not want them to see the content of that members only area document.

My thought is that perhaps your functional pages could deliver a search function as you create them that would search only in the areas that the functional page was placed. For instance, if you create a Forum Summary in the members only area (and it loads with a search function), it could search any associated discussion forum subpage attached to the forum summary page in the members only area. Same thing for the blog page, it would search any information contained on the blog pages. This would eliminate the issues of a non-member having a search return information related to a document contained in the member only area.

However, I think this suggestion is different that what people are asking for. However, their suggestion may have too many complexity to ever get implemented because I could see how a global search could cause all kinds of security and access issues. This suggestion might be a good step that is workable.

I agree, I think this is a must have feature i know my clients would love it.

Like others, I use a customised Google search box for my WA site. Not bad for free, but recently I've noticed that it's not capturing all my WA site text (and that's in unprotected WA pages). This isn't mission-critical for me, but it is very annoying as I'm forced to leaf through dozens of pages of my WA blog feature to find that posting I KNOW I made. So, for me, an internal search feature is as much as assisting me to manage my WA site as it is for outside users to find material.

I would be very grateful to have some way of managing my blog postings in WA (date, heading, tag, and/or body text). I want my blog to remain within WA, to improve overall search engine results. But with evermore postings, this is getting more difficult. Some type of internal search/order feature would be a blessing.

Sorry, we do not currently have any way to integrate search of protected pages.

If this is a critically important function for you, then Wild Apricot would not work for you.

We are considering doing this in the future but it is quite some time away (at least NOT in the next 6 months)

Are you sure? This is not the regular Google search he is talking about but the Google Mini Search Appliance. What is the programming language that is used for Wild Apricot?

We too really need an internal search engine for password protected areas! Please do this, or we will look for another solution. We're sort of waiting it out right now, and hoping you do it soon.

Thanks!

Hi,

Yes, this is an absolute necessity for us! We will be launching our Wild Apricot site in about six months, so I am hoping that this issue will be built into the system by then.

For groups that post a lot of members-only educational content - which is the reason they're members - Wild Apricot will not be able to compete for more professional non-profit/not-for-profit users unless you incorporate this.

If you can get this working, I think that you will have much bigger market, as your site does so many other things. We are working on a work-around solution right now, and we think we've found something that will work for a little while: where we just post the tables of contents in the public blog area and try to stick the important words in the title, but then link to the full listing in the members only section. However, I'm not sure that this is going to get people where they need to go, and it only works for that particular section - not other things we may want to put in the members only area.

So this is really, really important!!! (Please make it available in the next 6 months!)

Thanks!

I TOTALLY agree with this request. We need text search feature within WA member only area. We tried to use the free google text search but it seems to be unable to see or get to the member only area pages. Could be a set up issue, but it would be better if WA built a tool which they could make available on the webpages.

Let's devote this particular thread to search of member-only content.

What do others think?

What kind of content would typically be searched? (webpages only?)

I think wild apricot is brilliant but I have one major problem which is a major flaw at present.

I need to have search functionality within my member only pages. At present Wild Apricot only has search functionality within the directory of members not for the member content itself.

While it is possible to download a google or similar widget, these will only work on the public pages not within the secure member only pages.

Please, please Mr Apricot can we have proper search function that works thoughout the site

Brian

http://www.totallyexpat.com

Sorry I did not realize you are talking about protected areas. Google search would not work in this case.

Apparently, only the Google Mini Appliance (http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/features.html) can search protected areas. This is their description:

"The Mini can crawl and serve search results for sites protected by HTTP Basic and NTLM v1 and v2 security and can integrate with your LDAP system. Both authentication and authorization occur at serve time, so individual users see only the results they have clearance to access."

Is that us?