How to Bring CoffeeCup SiteSearch into Your NOF Site

 

One of our users created a great tutorial for using CoffeeCup FormBuilder in NetObject Fusion.  We liked it so much, we added it to the help file. You can see the original tutorial at http://www.graphicsmechanic.com/coffeecup_form_builder.html

 

This tutorial is for Publishing Flat Method Only

        

There are several ways to bring CoffeeCup generated Flash and related files into your NOF site, including the use of I-frames, but today we will be demonstrating how to do it using a simple text box. As you will soon learn, the process is simple, quick and easy.

      

Step 1:

Publish your completed CoffeeCup project to a folder on your desktop. Name that folder with a name that will remind you of what site it belongs to.

 

CoffeeCup will generate 5 files but for right now, the file we are concerned with is the published .html file.  “search.html”.

 

Step 2:

Move the new folder you created on your desk top (the one with all the CoffeeCup files in it) into your sites asset folder.

 

Step 3:

Open that file folder you just moved into your sites asset folder and double click on the .html file (in this case it would be the “search.html" file)

 

Step 4:

While the “search.html” page is displayed put your mouse over a clear area of the page then “Right Click” and from the context menu that pops up, select “View Source”. When the source code is revealed click on “Edit” then “Select All” then when all the text is selected in blue, click “Edit” and select “Copy” from the menu.

 

There are a lot of ways to do this but basically all we want to do is copy all the source code that's in “search.html” file to the clip board. Yup!, copy it all.

 

Step 5:

In Page Design View, go to the page where you want the search to be and using the text tool place a Text Box where you want the search to be and while your mouse cursor is blinking inside the new text box you just made press Ctrl+T and paste the html code we just copied from the search.html source view. Then Click “OK” to the Insert HTML dialog box. 

 

Note: Being the fact that our CoffeeCup search functions from a .swf and .php file we will not be able to “Preview” the page in “Page Preview” mode. The complete search will only become visible in the “Published” mode. However, what you will see in the “Page Preview” mode will be a perfectly sized blank search which you can use to assist you in positioning your search exactly where you want it on your page.

        

Now we need  to have fusion publish the balance of the CoffeeCup generated files (.php, .swf, .xml and all the graphic files the  CoffeeCup program generated with one exception, the .html file. That's right, we don't want fusion to publish that one. Why not? .....right, because we already implemented that code in Step 5.

 

Step 6:

In “Assets View” click on “Assets” then “New File” 

 

When the “New File” dialog box comes up, put a check mark in “Always Publish File” then click the “Browse...” button and browse to the CoffeeCup file folder that we placed in the sites asset folder earlier and browse to one of the CoffeeCup files and click on it. In this case I clicked on the “search.swf’ file. (file extensions wont show in this dialog box). Click the “OK” button.

 

Repeat step 6 until you have brought the rest of your CoffeeCup files into assets view, excluding the .html file. Don't forget to do all of your CoffeeCup image files also

 

Step 7:

Publish your site.

        

     

Note:  Your CoffeeCup search has to be published to the Internet before it will function properly.