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Epiphany SearchBoost (1)

SearchBoost is a project that will allow you to configure your Examine indexes to automatically boost certain DocTypes in your indexes, according to certain rules. So, for example you can make news articles appear higher in the search, or make it so that content that is less than a week old shows up higher in search results than older content.

The package installs a DLL and config file called "searchBoost.config". In this file you can define one or more rule sets that apply to the various indexes on your site. The syntax for each ruleset is:

The properties are as follows:

ruleSet - this is a set of rules that apply to a specific index set, you can set the following properties:

indexName - the name of the indexer, taken from the "ExamineSettings.config" file, e.g. "InternalIndexer"
stackBoosts - (true/false) whether boosts should stack, if true, all matching boost amounts are added together, if false (the default) then only the highest matching boost is used

You may define as many ruleSets as you like. You should only have one ruleSet per index however. Each ruleSet can have any number of rules, which have the following properties:

docTypeAliases - a comma separated list of DocType aliases to match, you can specify a wildcard match by entering "*" as the value
nodeIds - a comma separated list of node ids to match against
boostAmount - the amount to boost matching documents by
boostIfNewerThan - if set to greater than 0, it will only apply the rule if the dateField you specify if within the last X days, where X is the value of this setting
dateField - the name of the field that contains the date to check for boostIfNewerThan

Set up the rules for the indexes, re-index your site, and you should be good to go. The package works by boostng the Lucene Documents for the items that match the rules. For some great information on boosting, see Ismail's blog post: http://thecogworks.co.uk/blog/posts/2012/november/examiness-hints-and-tips-from-the-trenches-part-3/