Hey friends! Well I am finally to the part of my development where I need to begin thinking hard about implementing some form of advanced search. I am a bit of a newbie so please forgive me for asking such a general question. Up until now I have been able to see quite clearly where this project is going. I have all of the items defined that I will be using and I also have all of my main sections mostly fleshed out, what I do not have is anything other then ajax searching and the basic search.php template (with a couple extra fields defined). I have read several form posts about specific advanced search features, but I was hoping for something a bit more general and I would just code from there.
What I would like some insight on is where should I start in the development of an advanced search interface, what methodologies do people implement when producing a site wide search, and finally are there any really good tools that would make my life easier in this process? Any info is extremely appreciated.