Help with PicoSearch

What codes can I use in my template to further customize my search results?

Overview: Your engine's search results page is designed by you in the "Customize Template" section of your account manager. This allows you to match the look and feel of your website so the search results appear perfectly integrated. Your template specifies where the search results appear within your design, and these results are generated by PicoSearch based on the user's search query.

To understand the parts of the search results and what can be done with them, check out the FAQ on Titles and Other Parts of each Search Result. Several essential settings for the search results themselves can also be found in the "Page Design" and "Colors and Fonts" sections of your account manager.

For more advanced adjustments, PicoSearch provides the following codes to embed in your template. They come in four flavors:
  1. General Substitution Codes: insert or change sections of your template dynamically from the search box call

  2. Parts Substitution Codes: change default messages and behaviors for the search results page

  3. Style Control Codes: attach your own CSS classes to parts of the search results page

  4. Layout Control Codes: move or remove sections of the search results page


1. General Substitution Codes: insert or change sections of your template dynamically from the search box call.

Here we discuss how to gives you some context dependency depending on your calling page. It is not recommended as a substitute for completely different templates, which are truly supported only by separate accounts.
 
Any occurence of the code word _PICOCALLER in your template will be replaced with the value of the argument "picocaller" in your PicoSearch calling code. That is, if you add the following line to your search box code:
<input type="hidden" name="picocaller" value="1" />
Then a graphic in your template with the file name of "button_PICOCALLER.gif" will become button1.gif, and you will have the opportunity to show a different button image to reflect the calling page of the search. If the picocaller argument is not set, then all occurences of _PICOCALLER will simply be erased, and the button.gif graphic would be in used in the example case.
 
If you need more than one _PICOCALLER plugin value, there are also _PICOCALLER0, _PICOCALLER1, ... _PICOCALLER9. These are replaced in the same way by args picocaller0 through picocaller9.





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