Some products not displaying in Search

We have a large Zen Cart installation [8800+ products], which has been largely trouble-free until recently, when we discovered quite by chance that some products cannot be searched, although they do appear on the site, and can be purchased, added to the cart, browsed-to, etc. Does anyone know of a reason this might happen, and what can be done to fix it? I've tried deleting and re-adding one of the offending items, to no avail.

Thanks in advance for any help you're able to give! Details about our install appear below.

What version of Zen Cart are you using? 1.3.9h

Has your site been upgraded? When? From what version(s)? No.

*What plugins/addons have you installed? When? * We have a few addons: Apsona ShopAdmin [used to add products], a Quick Order addon, an MSRP addon, and a pricing levels addon, but nothing relating to search.

HOW did you install Zen Cart? (upload via FTP and run zc_install, or a one-click install from your hosting company? (one-click installs might mean you don't have enough information about your site/server to make customizations easily)) That's before my time, but I think it was a one-click install from the hosting company. Still, I've got all the information necessary to customize.

What version of PHP and MySQL is your server using? (See Admin->Tools->Server Info) PHP 5.2.17 (Zend: 2.2.0), MySQL 5.5.30-30.2

WHEN did the problem "start"? How does that compare with other events of your hosting company, changes you've made to your site files/addons, or your admin settings, etc? The problem was first noticed about a week ago, and only seems to affect newer items. Every modification ever made to the site happened months before this error.

Please post your site URL so we can take a look at it.* The site URL is savemedical.net. You can test the problem by entering "17426" as a search string, or "Cosmopore." One is an item number, the other a unique word from the description, and you can see results don't come up. However, the product does exist: http://www.savemedical.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=936418

HAVE YOU LOOKED IN THE FAQ AREA for answers to your question? Have you searched the FORUM for your error message or for answers to the question you're asking? I've searched this forum, as well as multiple Google searches. The search function in Zen Cart must be pretty robust, 'cause it seems like I'm the only person having this problem. :)

Have a look at your includes/modules/pages/advanced_search_result/header_php.php file to see if it has been modified.
You could do a backup and replace it with a vanilla file to see if the issue clears.

And this reply from Dr Byte on a similar thread may help.

Are you using "linked products" (where you've configured some products to show in multiple categories)?
If not, then go to Admin->Tools->Store Manager and do a reset with "reset master categories ids".
Then try the search again.

Ah, both excellent suggestions! Unfortunately, includes/modules/pages/advanced_search_result/header_php.php is indeed the original, and resetting all master category IDs - which I had a lot of hope for! - didn't do the trick.

I'm still burrowing through everything here, but if there are any other ideas anyone might have, please, share! :)

Just a thought, If you create a test category and put one of the non searchable products into it, does it then become searchable?

strelitzia:

Just a thought, If you create a test category and put one of the non searchable products into it, does it then become searchable?
Aha! That's the problem, right there: somewhere along the line, the template used for uploads lost its categories, which is why some could be searched, and others could not. This should be a pretty simple fix. Thanks so much!

My pleasure. Glad you got to the root of the problem.

SAVEmedical
How did you fix that. We are having same problem.

jsarwar:

SAVEmedical
How did you fix that. We are having same problem.

So, you are also using Apsona ShopAdmin and have come across a category issue? (That is how I interpreted SAVEmedical's problem causer).

Hi,
We are using standard zencart 1.3.9 version with only few modules installed. We had about 1100 products and search was working ok but now we have about 1700 products and search does not bring most of those. For example a product name "Red apple" and when we search for red apple it does not show that product but it shows two other products and among those two one have word red in description and second one have word apple in description.

For some products search is working fine but for some not. I wish Zencart have better search option