Menu
Hi,
I am looking for some advice regarding a search system I would like to implement for a website. I am merely the project manager, and will pass on the project to some contract web devs. I would like to know the scope of this project before I approach them with my request. Thus, my first post here. Thanks in advance for your help!
To summarize my request with a simple phrase: tag-based search.
Visitors to my site want to find documents (PDFs) based on various criteria. My company makes various widgets (Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta, and so on, are some of the model names). Each model has various instruction guides associated with them. Some documents apply to more than one model. These models also contain sub-components that might have their own instruction guides (Antenna, Leg, Arm, Door, and so on, are some of the sub-components of the various models). Thus, a visitor knows their model and would like to see all documents associated with that model (Widget Alpha has an Arm and a Leg); conversely, a visitors might only want to see a document for an Antenna.
What I envision on the backend is that a PDF is uploaded to my web server. Before uploading, the document is tagged: in the example above, I would tag the Antenna document as ANTENNA and ALPHA and BETA (the Antenna sub-component is part of the Alpha and Beta models). I suppose the Tags field at the bottom of the POST NEW THREAD in this forum (“Separate tags using a comma.”) would approximate my request.
On the front-end, the visitor searches for these documents using the same criteria I use on the back-end. They might click an ANTENNA and ALPHA checkbox, and the results would display all PDFs tagged ANTENNA and ALPHA.
I hope this makes sense to someone. And if so, could you please provide a brief explanation of which way I should head. For example, I’ve briefly looked at Drupal and Joomla (have no idea if that is even the right place to look). I’ve also looked at WaveMaker. Again, no idea if that’s even in the same ballpark. Maybe this is a ultra-custom system that I would have to have a developer write from the ground up.
Any guidance is appreciated. I posted this in the General forum as I have no idea if this would use JS, SQL, PHP, etc. Thanks!