Add Advanced Search to a Top Level Team Site in MOSS 2007

If you are running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) and have created a site from a collaborative template such as the Team Site template or Blank Site template, you may notice that by default you do not see the Advanced Search option to the right of your search box as you do when you create a Publishing Portal or Collaboration Portal. The screen shots below illustrate the difference.
Top Level Collaboration Portal Search Box


Top Level Team Site Search Box


A reader of our book asked a great question in our forums on how to add the link if you have a team site as the top level site in your site collection. I supplied a quick answer in forum but then realized it might be a good topic to post about in more detail here.
Basically to get started, in order to use the Advanced Search, you need to have a page from which to perform your query and then another to display the search results. MOSS 2007 has page layouts / template for each of these as well as provides you with customizable web parts if you want to create everything completely from scratch to suit your specific requirements. However the quickest route would be for you to create a sub site on your team site using the Search Center template as this site template already contains the elements you require. This is the same template that is used for the search site in the Collaboration portal which many organizations use as the starting point for their Corporate Intranet. The steps for doing so are described below.

1. From the home page of your top level team site, select Create from the Site Actions menu.
2. Select Sites and Workspaces from the Web Pages category.
3. 
   
   Fill in the details for your new site. Be sure to select the Search Center template under the Enterprise tab. Also it is a good idea to inherit permissions of your top level site since you would likely want to ensure all users of top level site will be able to access the advanced search interface.
   
   
4. Click the Create button to complete the creation of your new search site.
5. 
   
   You will be redirected to the home page of your new search site. The page will be displaying a search box with a link to the Advanced Search page.
   
   
6. Click the Advanced Search link.
7. From the Advanced Search page, copy the url of the page.
8. Select Site Settings from the Site Actions menu.
9. Because you are on a sub site to your top level site where the majority of site collection settings exist, you need to then select Go to Top Level Site Settings.
10. 
    
    Select Search Settings.
    
    
11. 
    
    Select the top option and paste in the url that you copied in step 7. The url should end with /{the url name of your search site}/advanced.aspx.
    
    
12. Click OK.
13. When you return to the home page of your team site, you will now see the Advanced Search link and clicking it will bring you to the Advanced Search page.

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