| |
You've got yourself a nice site. And you want to make it nicer
with a search engine.
This is the right article for you.
To clarify, "search engine" and "directory" are different
concepts.
A search engine, by definition, searches. Type in a word or
phrase and click the button; it does the searching for you.
With a directory, visitors do their own searching. You click
on subjects until you get to the section of the directory which
contains a link to the information you are looking for.
This article is about search engines.
The search engine familiar to most folks is the internet search
engine. Internet search engines, as the name implies, can
search all the public sites on the internet.
(Well, that's not exactly true. The size and growth rate of the
internet, and the limitations imposed by physical computers
and the hardware connecting the Net, preclude any one search
engine from searching the entire Internet.)
Internet search engines use http, ftp, or other protocols to
fetch files from remote sites. Some well known (webcrawler.com,
hotbot.com, etc.) and many relatively obscure sites make Internet
search engines available to netizens and our seemingly insatiable
quest for information.
A local search engine, on the other hand, is limited to one site
(or portion of a site). It is unable to search other sites on the
Internet; it just scans the files on the local server. When you
use a search engine like this, your search results will pertain
to one site.
No need to spend the big money for (and distract your visitors
with) an "Internet" search engine when all you want is help your
visitors find information on your site. Large or diverse sites
can keep visitors longer with a well-implemented local search
engine.
Suppose you have a business opportunity site with its own ezine.
A local search engine lets your visitors find otherwise obscure
references to their areas of interest. An easy-to-use site
containing information valuable to the visitor is likely to be
remembered and bookmarked.
Local search engines search your site in one of two ways:
1. Real-time: A real-time search is a search of your site as it
currently exists. When you update a webpage or other
searchable file, it is immediately available to the search
engine.
"Anywhere But In the Kitchen," my wife Mari's popular kitchen
advice/tips and recipe request/exchange site, utilizes a local
search engine to search not only her site's HTML pages but
also its database of recipes. Thus, a person can get a list of
recipes with specific ingredients. It's a real-time search
engine; when site users request or submit recipes, their
contributions are immediately available for searching.
Go to http://willmaster.com/kitchen/ and play with it for a
bit. Get a sense of what a simple local search engine can do.
Such at tool might be exactly what you're looking for.
For local, real-time searches, I recommend the free "Simple
Search" script. This one is so easy to use that I refer people
to it rather than writing my own free engine. And it is quite
modifiable for those proficient with Perl.
You can download Matt Wright's "Simple Search" from Matt's
Script Archive at:
http://worldwidemart.com/scripts/search.shtml
2. Pre-compiled: The search engine, or its helper, scans your
site every night (or other frequency you determine). During
that scan, a list of keywords and/or a word list of your pages
are compiled and stored in a database.
When your visitor uses the search engine, the engine searches
the compiled database and renders the results page from those
matches.
The pre-compiled search method is best for large sites.
Although the database is always outdated by the amount of time
since the most recent compilation, it's the preferred solution
for searches exceeding a search filesize total of 10-15MB.
(Beyond that point, a real-time search becomes unacceptably
slow.)
As mentioned above, I recommend "Simple Search" for local
searches, especially if the total size of your HTML files is less
than 10MB. However, I have investigated only a few scripts
among the many available at CGI download sites. Start at the
"Links and Resources" section of
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/examples.html
and surf around a bit; see what is available which may meet
your site requirements.
If you don't have CGI for your site, you may wish to give
http://www.freefind.com/ a try. They advertise "less than 10
minutes" setup. And it's free.
If you need help let me know.
William Bontrager is a master CGI programmer and publisher
of the free weekly "Willmaster Possibilities" ezine featuring easy
to understand and implement CGI and Javascript solutions for
your website. http://willmaster.com/possibilities/.
Copyright © 1999 William Bontrager
SOURCE: The Dirtsmart IQlibrary http://www.iqlibrary.com/
|
|
