Under the Search Areas tab you will find a number of settings to control in what areas of the website the replacement should be done.

The main setting under this tab is the Enable in area setting. If you don't know what to choose, leaving this to Body (not in head) is usually fine.

  • Content (Articles & Categories)
    Only in articles from the article manager. So not in forum articles, for instance. And also not in articles shown through modules.
  • Components
    In the main area of your site. So in all components, but not in modules and other elements outside the main area.
  • Head (not in body)
    Only in the head section of the html (the top part containing the title and other meta tags).
  • Body (not in head)
    In the whole site except the head of the html.
  • Everywhere
    In the whole site, so also in the head of the html.

The shared Search Areas settings control content fields, feeds, edit forms, and administrator pages. Feed and administrator handling support No, Yes, and Only.

The Pro version adds Only Between, Enable in HTML Tags, Limit to Tag Selection, and Tag Selection. HTML tag handling also supports No, Yes, and Only.

With the Pro version of ReReplacer, you can also limit the replacements based on a multitude of possible conditions.

Settings

Enable in area Select where to do the searches.

Options: Content (Articles & Categories), Components, Head (not in body), Body (not in head), Everywhere
Enable in categories If enabled, replacements are also made in category titles and descriptions.
Enable in titles If enabled, replacements are also made in article and category titles.
Enable in content If enabled, replacements are also made in article content and category descriptions.
Enable in author names If enabled, replacements are also made in the article author name.
Enable in feeds Control replacement in website feeds.

Options: No, Yes, Only
Enable in Admin Control replacement in the Administrator.

Options: No, Yes, Only

Be careful! Only activate this if you really need to. An incorrect search or replacement could prevent access to the Administrator.
Enable in edit forms If enabled, replacements are also made in site and administrator edit forms. Administrator edit forms additionally require Enable in Admin.
Only between (start/end) The search will only take place between the given (html) code. This only works if both the start and end field are entered.

The search will be done between the start code and the first found end code after it.
(You cannot use regular expressions in these fields.)

Example:
If you replace - by / between a and b:
a --- a --- b --- b
will become:
a /// a /// b --- b
Enable in HTML tags Control replacement inside the actual HTML tags <...>, rather than the content between opening and closing tags.

Options: No, Yes, Only
Limit to tag selection If enabled, the replacements will only be done within selected tags and tag parameters. Otherwise searches will be done within all tags.
Tag selection A list of permitted tags and parameters to do the searches in. This regards the actual tags <...>, not what is between a open and close tag.
Use an asterisk to permit all tags/parameters. The syntax of this list is like this:
tag_name_1[parameter_name_1, parameter_name_2] tag_name_2[parameter_name_1, parameter_name_2]

Example (permits search in the values of the 'alt' and 'title' of all tags, permits search in the whole 'a' tag):
*[alt,title] a[*]

Process Explanation

Some more in-depth information about the underlying process. You can skip this part if it is too complex for you.

The choice you make in the Search Area, not only determines in what area the replacement is done, but also at what stage in the rendering process of the page the replacement is done.

During the rendering of the page, ReReplacer gets triggered 3 times.

  • Content Prepare
    This is the stage where the articles are prepared for further handling.
    Replacements using area Content (Articles & Categories) will be run at this stage.
  • After Dispatch
    At this stage the main content for the page has been generated. This concerns the 'component' area. So this does not include any modules yet.
    Replacements using area Components will be run at this stage.
    PS: After this stage it is no longer possible to add scripts/styles to the page through php commands.
  • After Render
    This is the last stage in the process, before the final html gets passed to the browser. So this includes all the html, including the 'component' area, all modules and the 'head' section of the html (which contains the site title, meta tags and possible script and style tags). All other Replacements will be run at this stage. So Body (not in head), Head (not in body) and Everywhere.