This plugin has now been updated for the 2.x series, you can download it here ( AM Search Highlighter ). NOTE : For this version you do not have to make any changes to your skin ;)

More Accurate Search Results Plus Multi-Term Highlighting

It's not often that you can kill two birds with one stone and do it with panache. We believe the "Search Hi-Lite" plugin accomplishes this. As the name suggests, it will highlight multiple search terms with different, user-customizable, colors and styles. Now visitors can actually see the results that they're searching for, at a glance. That in itself is useful, but that's not all this plug-in accompllishes. This plug-in yields more ACCURATE search results than the search function that ships with b2evolution!

You are going to like this plug-in!

While making the proto-type, we discovered that a b2evolution search matched on text inside XHTML tags. A search for "http://" returns every post with an img tag <img src="http://blah.jpg" /> or a link <a href="http://www.blah.com"> in other words, just about every post in a blog! Not good.

When returns are not highlighted, this behavior is difficult to notice. Once we highlighted the terms, however, it became apparent that b2evo was returning unseen text and highlighting them lead to broken images, broken links and - in the worst case - a broken site (if served with a MIME type of "application/xhtml+xml"). It looked awful and was FAR from the desired result. We had to completely redesign the plug-in to work around (and ultimagely FIX) this behavior.

Or goal: Give visitors highlighted search returns that matched the search term(s), either as full words or contained within a larger word (limiting the search to text VISIBLE in the blog).

We have achieved this, via creative coding and modifications to the skin's main template file "_main.php". Note: No core files were harmed in the making of this plugin.

To demonstrate the difference between the standard b2evo search returns and our "Astonish Me! Hi-Lite Search" Plug-in, click the links below. In each case, the search if for "http://":

• AM! "Search Hi-Lite" Plugin (Returns this post with six "http://" highlights.) B)
• Standard b2evolution search (Returns more posts. Which ones actually contain "http://"?) :-/

This simple test makes it clear that not only does this plugin provide obviously VISIBLE search returns, but they're also more relevant and accurate!

You want this plugin, don't you? (I warned you about that!) HA! For downloading and installation instructions ... search on the next page.

Question from a member:

Where can I change the maximum allowed length (in characters) of the permalinks for a post?

There appear to be three possible solutions:

1. Don't use really long URL's Long URLs are ugly, using them isn't doing your visitors any favors and long URLs can break in an email (a broken URL is an unlinked URL). Generally speaking, URLs should be short, easy to type and unique.

   You can specify a long title (e.g., Watch Me Kill The President! (Jan 13) "Ridiculous In America" on ABC ), but then a shorter "URL Title" (e.g., killing_the_president). There is a spot for this in the Back Office. You don't HAVE TO use your title as the default "URL Title". Many people do this when they have a long title.

   We recommend this 'short URL' solution over anything else.

   HOWEVER ... search engines parse the title for words .. (not sure how they handle the underscores) but you *might* end up with better rankings with a long (and descriptive) title. (We've discovered some interesting information regarding rankings and URLs, which you can read about on the last page, below).

2. Use "Post called up by its URL title". A possible solution if your server supports "clean urls" or "extra-path info". (To set this option in the back office, go to ... settings --> Link Options --> select the "Use extra-path into" box.

   ** WARNING ** Windows-based servers currently do not support this option.

   Instead of "URL title", try "Post on archive page, located by it's title". This may achieve most of what you're looking for, as it yields the full title in the URL and doesn't require any core file hacking.

3. Hack your b2evolution installation to allow for longer URLs. There are some changes you must make to enable really LONG urls. Here's what you do ...(depending on which version you have, select the correct page, below). Unsure?