Website update - search improvements

Website update - search improvements

Today I found a bug with search and one thing lead to another and I ended up making some significant improvements to the search feature.

Previously you had to choose whether to search for an issue by its name or search for contents within an issue. And it didn't work very well when you just wanted to go straight to a specific publication.

As of this change, there is a simple search box at the top of the page. It can be used to search for a publication, issue by name, or issue by contents.

When you search, if there is at least one matching publication then the list of publications will be shown.

If there are no matching publications then it will check for issues that match by issue name and will show a list if any.

If there are no matching issues then it will check for content within issues and show a list if any.

Here are some examples:

Search for "wheels": this will bring up all publications with the word "wheels" in the name.

Search for "wheels australia": this will restrict the results to Australian publications.

Search for "wheels australia 2005": this will show a list of issues with wheels in the publication name and from Australia and restrict the results to issues from 2005.

Search for "wheels australia 2005 ford falcon": this will further restrict the results to issues with articles relating to Ford Falcons.

Search for "2005 ford falcon": this will show a list of issues from any publication from 2005 with articles relating to Ford Falcons.

Note that the keywords can be in any order and all metadata is searched so, for example, the word "wheels" could be picked up in publication, issue or contents.

You can also use month names (including abbreviated month names like "feb") and seasons to restrict your search if needed. This will help if you are looking for a quick way to get to a specific issue, eg. "wheels sep 1998".