Also check out the Better Store Search Knowledge Base .

Installation Troubleshooting

This section should help you solve any issues or questions you might have with Better Store Search.

How can I update to the new version?

1. Go into CEM (the Commercial Extension Manager you used to install)
2. Click on the extension in the listing
3. Change the module key to tbtbss_latest
4. Click the 'install' button

I get an error when installing with CEM

Message: The provided service url is either invalid or unreachable. Make sure that the service url you provided is correct and try again in a few minutes. If the problem consists we advise you to contact your software retailer for assistance.
Explanation:
Most of the time this error is due to your hosting account disabling the usage of the PHP fopen and file_get_contents functions with remote URL sources. There are two things you can do to resole this issue.

First, try adding the following line to your .htaccess file in your root Magento directory or override php.ini file:
  php_flag allow_url_fopen on
If this does not work, we have created a patch for CEM 1.0 to use an alternate url fetch method (CURL).Apply this CEM 1.0 patch to your Magento installation: cem-no_fopenurl_patch.zip. Transfer the patch files associatively to your Magento directory overwriting any existing files. If you need more detailed instructions, see here: How To Apply A Patch(applying a Sweet Tooth patch is very similar)

If your host DOES allow fopen and file_get_contents with URLs, the second most likely scenario is that your server is experiencing an inability to reach our SOAP wsdl server. Most hosts allow this, however some are not as lenient. You need to ask your webhost to allow SOAP port 80 connections. I that’s not an option, than allowing an outgoing connection on the standard port of “80� towards 208.43.36.78 and 208.43.36.79 (or just http://www.wdca.ca) will do as well.

If all else fails, with FTP access you can do a manual installation of the files for setup. You will be required to request the latest version and subsequent versions of BSS on your own in this case.

How to temporarily disable Better Store Search

Follow these instructions to disable BSS from your Magento Store. We recommend that you do this instead of uninstalling BSS since it disables everything completely so that no BSS files are loaded.

1. Go through all your shopping cart and distribution rules and disable them. This is important!
2. Access the following file in an FTP:

app/etc/modules/TBT_Bss.xml
and change the line where it says <active>true</active> to <active>false</active>

That's it! Better Store Search should then be disabled.

If you have CEM installed, you will probably also need to Turn Off Automatic Updates

I can't get product-specifc weightings to work

Check your var/log/betterstoresearch.log file. If you don't see this file, make sure logging is enabled on your store (in the developer section of the config) then try the search again and check the file. If you see this message:

WARNING: The size of the weighted product list is over 10,000 products. This may exhaust server memory or time limits, so manual product weightings has temporarily been disabled. Full manual modifier product size was: ...

This means that BSS is not finding the bss_weight attribute. This is most likely because your flat catalog indexes (different than search indexes) are not rebuilt properly. You need to rebuild your flat catalog, then try again.

If you indeed have over 10,000 products with custom BSS weightings, you can disable the failsafe.To enable product weightings despite this warning, delete lines 53-56 inclusive in app\code\community\TBT\Bss\Model\CatalogSearch\Mysql4\Fulltext\Collection.php. If you're running Better Store Search 2.0 or higher delete lines 13-16 inclusive in app/code/community/TBT/Bss/Model/CatalogSearch/Relevence/Algorithm/Manprodmodifiers.php instead. Keep in mind that an update will revert this change.

I've installed the extension, but only new queries are improved with hyphenation and plural support.

First, make sure you've fully cleared your Magento cache in the Cache Management section of your Magento back-end.

If you've already cleared cache (or cache is turned off), you may be experiencing a saved search result for some of your queries. If someone who previously accessed the site has before made the same search, the results are stored and pulled up for quick retrieval.

To reset the search results, you must go into the you Catalog -> Search Terms section in your Magento admin. Once there, select the keywords for which you would like to reset the search results for, and use the upper-right drop-down box to delete them. Unfortunately, you will also lose your saved search statistics for this entry as well.

How to turn off automatic updates

Turning off automatic update for CEM, the installation and update utility that Better Store Search currently uses, follow these instructions.

1. Log-in to your Magento back-end
2. Go to System -> Magento Connect -> Commercial Extension Manager in the menu.
3. Click on the Better Store Search v*** (*** is the currently installed version) in the grid
4. Click on set the selection to "No" for the row that says "Update Automatically" then click on the "Install" button
5. Refresh the page to see that the "Update Automatically" value has changed.

It's still auto-updating even though I followed those instructions
1. Copy the file app\code\community\MageParts\CEM\etc\config.xml to app\code\local\MageParts\CEM\etc\config.xml
2. Go to line 163 of app\code\local\MageParts\CEM\etc\config.xml and remove these lines that begin with "<crontab>" up to and including the line that has ">/crontab<"

If done correctly this should turn off automatic updating

Also check out the Better Store Search Knowledge Base.