austin
29 Jul 2010, 09:47 AM
Here is what I am looking for. I work in the auto parts business, and we are building our website up. We want a search function on the site similar to the one found at: http://dixie-electric.com/dixie/ecat.html. Basically, we need a product lookup for our customers to be able to select make, model, submodel, year, etc. And the function should be smart, so that when customers select "Ford" as their make, the model category will be refined to only include the options Aerostar, Bronco, Ranger, etc.
I'm sure this can all be done with some brutally complex databasing software, but I am not educated in this sort of thing well enough to have a prayer of using that. However, I had a thought...when a website has a feature like that, it might be searching through a database of files/pages on the host server. OR, it could just be a really smart search engine, searching that domain. The idea being that if they select "Alternator" "Ford" "Ranger" "XLT" "1995", then all it does it input "Alternator+Ford+Ranger+XLT+1995" into an unseen search bar and returns the results. Of course, there will only be one page on the site that has all of those keywords -- that being the product they are looking for. So it would be a search that was refined with these little drop-down menus.
I am not a technological genius by any means, so it occurs to me that someone has surely come up with this idea before. There must be some kind of user-friendly software or a web-based service that will allow me to create such a string of queries (starting from Make, for example, and inputting all possible models, followed by all possible submodels, and all possible years for these). I know it will take a lot of work, and I am also prepared to pay for such software, so no need pointing me toward some free thing that barely works.
Any help here would be amazing. Thanks so much!
I'm sure this can all be done with some brutally complex databasing software, but I am not educated in this sort of thing well enough to have a prayer of using that. However, I had a thought...when a website has a feature like that, it might be searching through a database of files/pages on the host server. OR, it could just be a really smart search engine, searching that domain. The idea being that if they select "Alternator" "Ford" "Ranger" "XLT" "1995", then all it does it input "Alternator+Ford+Ranger+XLT+1995" into an unseen search bar and returns the results. Of course, there will only be one page on the site that has all of those keywords -- that being the product they are looking for. So it would be a search that was refined with these little drop-down menus.
I am not a technological genius by any means, so it occurs to me that someone has surely come up with this idea before. There must be some kind of user-friendly software or a web-based service that will allow me to create such a string of queries (starting from Make, for example, and inputting all possible models, followed by all possible submodels, and all possible years for these). I know it will take a lot of work, and I am also prepared to pay for such software, so no need pointing me toward some free thing that barely works.
Any help here would be amazing. Thanks so much!