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Searching the items

The component does not use the native joomla search or smart-search. Main reason for this is performance.

You can search any dataitems menu page using the ?q= parameter. So if you wan't to search your Finish  accomodations having the term 'Sauna' you would use somethinf like https://www.example.com/finland.html?q=sauna

For your visitors you will need a searchbox, this searchbox can be found as one of the mod_datamenu's layouts : searchbox_custom ( search17_custom in older versions). This searchbox adds the text value as ?q= query parameter.

As any other mod_datamenu module this searchbox requires a dataitems menu to point to, so it's only displayed on pages with a dataitems-menu and will only search the dataitems presented in the current active menu. This behaviour is consistent with the navigation menu's, that only show the navigation for the current menu as well.

If you have several menu's and you want to search all items at once you will need a dataitems-menu showing all items at once. To create a menu showing all items simply create a new menu leaving all filters empty.

Now to point the mod_datamenu to that menu take the ID ( it's on the right hand site in the menu manager) and enter it as 'default id' in the module configuration using a minis sign. So if the menu-ID is 220 use -220 as default id.

If you omit the minus sign, the module will point to the current menu item whenever on a dataitems menu page, and to the default-id's menu on other pages. This allows to have the searchbox (or any other mod_datamenu module) on any joomla page pointing to a valid dataitems menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • There is a module layout called 'search' this is a dropdown style navigation, not a searchbox
  • Searching the descriptions and titles is a pro feature

mod datamenu

The left hand side of the mod_datamenu configuration is the default joomla on, this page depict the settings on the right side.

layout

Each module need a layout to display it's content, the mod_datamenu has different types of layouts. The function changes with the suffix.

The module mod_datamenu is used to

Display a navigation menu

Layouts without a suffix, or ending on _menu ( VN:1631) display a navigation menu ( not to be confused with a joomla menu)

List

Layouts with _list display a list of selected items.

Layouts with _items display a list of items as well, however this list addapts to the page. So on  Spanje it would display other item then on Marokko

Extra SEO content

Layouts can be customized easily

Algorithm

The setting of this parameter influences the filtering of the sub-menus. smart and mini deselect combinations of categories that would result in zero items. yep that's confusing: the setting 'max' could result in a selection like United-States + Quebec, which will result in zero hits (well some might argue that Canada is a kind of US state but still).

Prefix

Used in combintion with 'adding content'

default id

The module always needs a com_datafeeds menu item to work with. The datafeeds menu defines the filters, navigation menu order and text strings. If the module is displayed on a datefeeds menu page it will automatic use that one. If you have several datafeed menu's the module will adapt the the one currently visible, so in general you will only need one navigation menu on your site. The module adapts even if the default ID is set.

If the module is used on a non datafeed menu, for example on an article page the module has no reference to a datafeeds menu and it will diplay: nothing. In this case you will need the default id, this value points to the correct datafeeds menu. You will find this ID on the right site in the joomla menu manager.

Levels

 This parameter sets the number of sub-menu levels shown, see this forum article for details

Items

Number of items to be shown in the _list and _item layouts.

And  sets the number of values shown in the menu's. That is, the first submenu displays all possible values, the other limit to items, then if the first submenu has a selected value the second  has no limit, the deeper ones items etc.

grid

Used in some menu's to define the number of columns

Sort/Order

Impacts the _list and _items

Group

Impact the _list and _items, like the group parameter in the datafeeds menu configuration it will show only one item for each grouped value

Adding content to the datafeeds pages

Mod_datamenu allows to add extra text, meta tags and page titles to single datafeeds pages.

For example, this gardening page has a customized meta-description and (the same) text in the lower left part of the page.

Step one

adding a mod_datamenu module

Create a new mod_datamenu module using the 'extensions -> module mangager' in the joomla administrator. On the right select 'Article' ( artikel in older versions) as your layout. On the left assign it a title and module position.

 

Step two

adding and mapping content

To map articles to datafeeds pages the datafeeds page slug is used. This slug is used as  article alias when creating an article.

The page slug is the part of the url starting with the menu-alias.The menu alias is defined in the joomla-menu settings of the datafeeds page.

From the slug only the string parts are used. Replace slashes '/', spaces ' ' and pluses '+' with dashes '-' and remove any query parameters from the url including the numbers and t- and q- tokens used in the datafeeds sef url.

You can find the alias in the source code of your html page in the head section and it looks like

<meta name="x-data-36" content="shop-antillen" />

 

Now create a new joomla article, use the string in content as alias

 

 It's a good idea to create a article category for the SEO  articles

Example

The extra content in this example is at the bottom https://demos.affiliatefeeds.nl/shop/Bulgarije.html

 

 The component does not allow to manually modify single items, although changes can be performed using import filters.