Note: This first post mentions some features that have been modified in later releases of this plugin. Please read the whole thread for the history and for what features are present in the current release.
This plugin adds "Album Title" and "Album Description" to the list of fields you can search. The results are returned in a separate box showing the albums that match your search criteria; this box appears above the regular search box. The only configuration option is on installation: whether to show an empty box when no albums match your criteria or not.
This was an interesting task due to the placement and number of the current plugin hooks. As Donnoman noted on CPG-Contrib, modifying album contents using the thumb_caption plugin filters is problematic since the albums depend on a count variable which is not accessible to the plugin. But in this case, since I'm returning albums and not images to browse in a meta album, the count isn't used. Here's the thread for those interested:
http://cpg-contrib.org/board/index.php?topic=52.0. Also, the search page doesn't have a plugin hook. This plugin uses a copied version of search.php and adds the new fields. For the search results page, I use the 'lastalb' meta album and "hijack" it by replacing its title with my title and $rowset with my search results.
It works, but I don't know if I would consider it ideal or not. I'm sure the plugin system will improve, but for the current state, I'm not sure if there's anything different (better) I could have done. If anyone has any comments, please let me know. It seems to me that adding this feature to the search core scripts would be useful; I'm willing to contribute to such an update for a future version.
Note that this plugin replaces the search link on your SUB_MENU. If you have the search link someplace else (and especially if you don't use the sub menu), you might think this plugin is not working. Ideally you shouldn't manually add a link to the plugin search form in your theme because then uninstalling the plugin would require an extra step. Please let me know where else this plugin should look for search links and I can add them.
v1.01 includes a bugfix (hard-coded config table) and a better check in _addresults
v1.02 improves the method of replacing the search link so it works with all themes
v1.03 adds the category name to the thumbnail caption for both search album results & 'lastalb' (Last Updated Albums)
v1.04 adds config option for category name display, fixes processing so original search form works, replaces search.php everywhere on page, added README.txt to describe theme custom search boxes, and a few other behind-the-scenes improvements
v1.05 adds a config panel, adds album stats, adds option to search albums only (no pictures) -
more detailsv1.06 uses a new stats template and date format, replaces thumbnail captions completely for albums -
more detailsv1.07 changes nothing except the default value of 'files' and 'views' in english.php, which is commented out by default -
more detailsv1.08 includes two important bug fixes regarding restricted & empty albums -
more details -
known issuesFYI: It's easier to read the thread manually than to use the "more details" links in the changelog.