July/August 2012 Newsbrief → Announcements

Better Search Program Suggestions

As many of you are probably aware, there is a search box on the left side of most pages on our website, below the menu, which you can use to search the website.  We often promote this as a great way for people to answer their own questions about the Mission, and indeed it is one of the best methods to find the information you are looking for in Maitreya's teachings.

However, we have found that it is not perfect.  The search box is a simple plugin from Google called "Google Custom Search," which means it uses Google's index of our website, and for a large site like ours (over 3,000 pages), Google does not index every page.  Therefore, there is an unknown number (probably small, but maybe not) of pages on our website that are not included in search results with our current search box.  This is a fairly harmful flaw, as it means users cannot always find the answer, specific Satsang or quote, etc. they are looking for.

Therefore, it has been one of our goals for some time to find a better search program that we could easily replace our current plugin with and integrate into the site.  We have looked into several options, but found them too expensive and complex for our purposes.  All we need is something simple and effective, the most important feature being that it indexes every page and makes them all searchable (of course, a discount for nonprofit organizations would also be nice).

So we are reaching out and asking if anyone knows of a good search program we could try.  If you have any suggestions, or would like to take on the task of researching and finding a suitable program, please let us know.  Thanks very much (thanks God)!