I have a field called "Page Title" that is part of a base template that I called "Base Titles". All of my content pages inherit this base template. I would like to boost the Page Title field in my search results so that if the search term is found in that field it is scored higher than other matches.
I can't figure out how to do this. I found this blog post by John West. However that seems to suggest that in order to boost a field I have to edit a config file?
Is that correct? So there is no way within the Sitecore UI to edit boosting values for a field? It has to be done by a programmer in a config file?
There is no in-built functionality for this. But off the top of my head I guess it's possible to approximate it.
For example. If your content editors have access to the Templates section of the Sitecore tree you could extend the "Template Field" template. Add a numeric field called Boost.
Then on any field in a template they could assign a numeric value
When you write your query you could look up the assigned value from of the associated field in the template and use the Boost method to apply it to the predicate.
Of course there's a bunch of different variations on this approach. This is really just the bare bones.
Sounds like you have the makings of a good marketplace module on your hands.