The refine search can make your search a lot more powerful than it is, and is designed to keep users on the search page rather than confuse them with too many search results thereby make them feel that they cannot find what they are looking for. The idea is that you can decide which taxonomy items you want to expose as headings in the refine search area. What the search then does is group all the search results returned into those headings and lets the user refine the search results to narrow and hopefully find exactly what they are looking for.
So, if your search returns 3 results - two of them tagged as news releases and 1 of them tagged as a speech then the refine search area could look something like this:
News Releases (2)
Speeches (1)
Setting up the refine search area is a 3 step process, and requires the taxonomy module to be enabled. The refine search can be configured at the individual search element level (ie. when adding a search element to an article), or for the Advanced Search which is done in General Site Details (renamed Global Settings in release 6.0).
Step 1: Decide which taxonomy headings you want to expose for the purposes of refining a search
In the Taxonomy admin area, make sure you check the "Use In Refine Search" checkbox for all taxonomy headings you want to expose.
So, lets say your taxonomy has been set up as follows:
Content Type
Speeches
Speeches from event abcde
Speeches from national conference
News Releases
Aug 2008
Jul 2008
Sport
Olympics
Rugby
Videos
2007 videos
2006 videos
Country
Australasia
Australia
New Zealand
Africa
North Africa
South Africa
Example 1: If you want your refining area to only display headings from the "Content Type" taxonomy like this:
News Releases (3)
Speeches (2)
Then you only check the "Use In Refine Search" checkbox for the Speeches, News Releases, sport etc taxonomy items. Note that you can set the headings at any level of the taxonomy hierarchy.
Example 2: If you want your refining area to display items from the Content Type taxonomy as well as the Country taxonomy like this:
Content Type
News Releases (3)
Speeches (2)
Country
Africa(3)
Australasia(3)
Then you check the "Use In Refine Search" checkbox for the Speeches, News Releases and Africa and Australasia taxonomy items.
In addition, if you only want items from Africa and not Australasia to display then you don't check Australasia.
Step 2: Configure the search element (if doing a site search)
When you insert a search element into an article you can control exactly which level 1 taxonomy areas you want that particular search to use for refining. You do this by marking the level 1 taxonomy(s) that you want in the section of the search element called "Show refine options for the following taxonomies". So using example 2 above - even though you have exposed the Country and Content Types for refining in the taxonomy admin area you can narrow it down further and only show Country or only show Content Types for that particular search. What this allows you to do is let different searches in your website show different refinement options.
The other field that can be configured in the search element is the maximum number of refinement options per taxonomy. This field is available to be able to limit the number of refinement headings that are returned within a section. Note that the refinement headings are returned in alphabetical order. So, if you only wanted a maximum of 2 refinement headings to be returned for Content Types then you would set this number to 2. So using example 2 above, if you only entered 2 in this field then Content Types would only ever return a maximum of 2 headings as follows:
Content Type
News Releases (3)
Speeches (2)
Country
Africa(3)
or
Content Type
News Releases (3)
Sport (5)
Country
Africa(3)
Step 2: Configure the Global Settings page (for an advanced search)
You can configure the refinement options for an advanced search in the Global Settings (General Site Details) admin area. This is similar to step 2 above for a site search, but it configures the advanced search. Under the Advanced Search heading you can turn the refinement options on or off as well as set the maximum refinement options.
Step 3: Set up the nominated article that appears on the left hand refine search area
You can use a nominated article to control the text that appears in the left hand refinement area. This nominated article can be set in the Searching section of nominated articles and is called "Search Text for Left Hand Side of Search Results Page". Use the tag <~~SearchRefine~~> to specify exactly where you want the system to place the refinement options. If you do not set the nominated article up then the system will set up general text for you.