Can Smart Search index menu items or custom modules?

Question

I am using Joomla v3.8.13 and have enabled Smart Search v3.0.0 which is indexing articles correctly.

I've also installed ChronoForms by ChronoEngine to create a Contact Us form and some other forms. The forms are added to the site using Menu Items.

Because there are no articles involved, the forms not do appear in the search results for 'contact' or words from the titles of the other menu items.

Unlike 'Contact Us', some of the menu items are not at the first level of the menu hierarchy so are not easy to find. This means that search is important for site visitors to find these pages. While they could resort to site-specific Google searches, these are not always easy to define for the average visitor. Also, the Google crawlers can take a while to do the indexing.

In addition to the menu items, I also have custom Modules which display narrative above the forms. The modules are only visible when the relevant menus are selected so they are page-specific. They also have content like 'contact' which matches the menu item titles.

If I could index either the Menu Items or the Modules this would solve the problem.

Is this possible, even if with some PHP customisation?

Answer 1

To answer the question: The items indexed in the smart search are driven by the 'finder' plugins. Menu items and custom modules have no finder plugins, but you could write them. I don't know of any already existing in the wild.

To solve the problem: Replace the menu items you have pointed to forms to point to single articles, move the content from the custom modules into those articles, and use the chronoform content plugin to embed the forms inside the articles like:

{chronoforms5}formnamehere{/chronoforms5}