How best to search a catalogue

[grantham]

So I'm in the final stages of creating a new programme website, but I have one major question of great importance to users, how would you best find a programme you need ?

1. Navigate through categories: Arsenal -> 2011-2012 list all progs from that season

2. Search all Arsenal programmes using a text search

3. Dropdown lists of all teams covered, then select the season required

4. Navigate through a stats database and highlight if the programme is in stock or not

5. In stock only search for a team, bring back ALL results that have a qty greater than 0

6. I'm currently mulling over all of the above, but not sure which is best, previous I had the option 1 in use, but it required alot of maintenance due to promotions and relgations, name changes and such like

Any ideas, doesn't matter how obscure you think it might be, I need someone to think outside the box

[Kickoff3pm]

I've nearly completed one for someone on here.

The filters are;

Seasons - year
Venue - home team or even ground name
What Type Of Fixture - league, cup etc
Date - date of match
Special notes - this can be anything postponed, singsheet, etc

Sure the are more you can add but really depends on how you setup the data and what sort of code you use for the site.

[grantham]

Problem is, my database already has 2333 teams, I don't want users to be offered ALL of them

[Kickoff3pm]

grantham wrote:

Problem is, my database already has 2333 teams, I don't want users to be offered ALL of them

So it's a shop ? the new version on my site http://www.football4sale.co.uk will have an option to show instock or all items. I know the are some sites that like to restrict people to stop ebay sellers trolling for price ideas but I don't do that. I don't compete with ebay because my site does not contain the same risk factors.

[Senior82]

I always use the search via control and F. If I just scan through I see a lot of SHEFFIELD which catches my eye - but then half of them turn out to be the wrong part of Sheffield!

Control and F highlights them all so I can skip through much quicker.

[ToffeeDan]

grantham wrote:

Problem is, my database already has 2333 teams, I don't want users to be offered ALL of them

If you were to export all of it to Excel (or Access) you could edit out the variance - so that's to say all your Manchester City/Man City could all be corrected to read the same (let's say Man City). You might want to highlight the most popular (such as Man City) so that people know what they are looking for. It must be a pain in the ass to search for Tottenham Hotspur when some are "Spurs" etc.