Progress: Layout Tweaks

So I'm doing a bit of tweaking to the layout., setting up the search box and results to take up the full width of the page.  Should have a stable layout by the end of the day.

Progress: Autocompletions

My first Autocompletion file has been processed by Google and its effect is showing in the search results.  Now this was a very small file, so there's not a huge amount to see, but now if you search for Michael Moorcock you'll see a small list of his story titles appear in the dropdown.

It did take quite a while for Google to process the autocompletion file, so I'm going to do a few large updates rather than many small ones.

Thanks Reddit

A couple of Reddit users have given some good suggestions for content to include in the search engine.  So thank you Document2, ChurchHatesTucker, Sto_Avalon and of course roamingwidgeteer (who is rocking our baby at me).

Progress: Autocompletions

A bit technical this.  I've written a little script that takes some info from a spreadsheet and turns it into an autocompletion xml file.

That's nice Dear.  What does it mean?

Well, it means that the search box should start being a bit more helpful, so when you start typing in part of an authors name, or part of a title, you'll see the author and title appear in the dropdown list.  And that should happen regardless of whether you're typing in the story title first, or the surname or the forenames.

Should is the operative word here.  I've just done my first test with a small amount of information.  It takes a while for Google to process the file and update their servers.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Taking Stock

It's been a fun couple of days putting in the story links, setting up and scripting. I'm happy with the progress so far. There are roughly a thousand stories in the index covering three genres and five podcasts. The integration between Blogger and the custom search engine is working well and I'm finding lots of old stories to re-listen to.

I'm switching the focus now to work on quality rather than quantity. I'll be working with the Autocompletions feature of Google's Custom Search Engine to improve the terms you see in the dropdown list when you're typing in a search. You can see a limited demonstration of this now by typing "Pet" into the search box, which should bring up "peter watts" and "peter watts the second coming" as completed search phrases.

I want to extend the data used for autocompletion to include, for every author and every story, the following pattern:

• StoryTitle by Forenames Surname
• Forenames Surname StoryTitle
• Surname Forenames StoryTitle
• Initials Surname StoryTitle
• Surname Initials StoryTitle

This is gilding the lilly somewhat, but it feels nicely complete to autocomplete with all of an author's stories in the index regardless of how you format the author's name.

Progress: A Tiny Change

I've made a very small change to the way the search links behave. Previously if you clicked a link in a post near the bottom of a long page the search would refresh but you wouldn't know anything had happened as all the refreshing was taking place off screen. So I've added a bit of jQuery to the template to scroll to the top of the page.

Like I said - very, very small.

It's the little things ...

Progress: Drabblecast Links Complete

Drabblecast links are in, but I'll admit to having taken a short cut. Drabblecast's urls follow a very regular pattern, so I was able to feed that pattern to the search engine instead of adding the story pages individually. There is a disadvantage to this. I've only been able to apply a label to Drabblecast as a whole, rather than to the individual stories. I've used fantasy for the moment as Norm's production is fantastic on many levels. This isn't ideal as stories like "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties" definitely belong in the horror category. When I have some more time I'll go back over these and reclassify.

Sorry Norm.

I will try harder!