Any know a good search engine for site?

[stratplan]

I have been using atomz and they have been excellent, however I have a couple of small religious sites, and they object to ads that come up when a search is done - many times not the kind of things wanted on a religious site.

Atomz will do an ads-free program for $8,000 per year. Yes. That's over the budget for these sites.

I've looked at google for a site searcher (same problem) and wonder if there is a decent program you have used for this? The above sites really need a search to help find references in a heavy-text content site, but don't want ads. Or at least the kind atomz and google put in. I've done a web search but don't see this perhaps specialized type of thing, except from the biggies. Ideas?

[midwest]

Why dont you give the pre-instgalled entropy search a try.

[cmyksteve]

Dick,
It looks like Google has a free search function, with no ads, for non-profits.
It's here under the Google Public Service Search

Steve

[stratplan]

Thanks, Ronnie and Steve.

I've checked Google and should know in a few hours how it goes. This may be what I need. Luckily, both sites are non-profit so that will fit their requirements.

If that fails, I'll try Entropy.

Thanks again.

[stratplan]

I tried Entropy, and am not doing something: I get the following error message from the test page:

-----------------
The requested URL /cgi-bin/entropysearch.cgi was not found on this server.
-----------------

Here's the test page:
http://www.biblicaltheism.com/search.htm

Any suggestions?

Dick

[cmyksteve]

Hi Dick,

...any luck with Entropy search?

I tried setting it up when I first came to this forum, but my interest ran out (short attention span here) before I got it to work- and never got back to it. I've used the free Google search successfully on one site with static html pages.

Now, with the CMS sites, like Joomla, running MySQL and some of the other packaged scripts using MySQL, I haven't had the need to get back to Entropy search.

Steve

[Jim]

I set this one up on Page-Zone last week, but the site was too large for it. It slowed way down in its indexing at about the 20,000 page mark, but it seems like a nice one if the site is 15,000 pages or less. It indexes the site by following the pages (spidering)

http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#sear

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by stratplan

I tried Entropy, and am not doing something: I get the following error message from the test page:

-----------------
The requested URL /cgi-bin/entropysearch.cgi was not found on this server.
-----------------

I tried entropysearch, and came up with the same error. The referenced file is not in the cgi-bin folder.

[edwurster]

Originally Posted by Jim

I set this one up on Page-Zone last week, but the site was too large for it. It slowed way down in its indexing at about the 20,000 page mark, but it seems like a nice one if the site is 15,000 pages or less. It indexes the site by following the pages (spidering)

http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#sear

I'm game. Since you've done this, what do I enter for the variables?

Originally Posted by GW

Open the config.php file and edit the seven user variables to your
preference. The fifth variable is the prefix the script will use
to create three tables in your database. The sixth and seventh
will be the username and password you'll use to log in to the
Control Panel.

$dData['hostname'] = "hostname";
$dData['username'] = "username";
$dData['password'] = "password";
$dData['database'] = "database";
$dData['tablename'] = "orcasearch";

$dData['adminName'] = "admin";
$dData['adminPass'] = "password";

I can guess that the last two are my choices.

[Jim]

Originally Posted by edwurster

I'm game. Since you've done this, what do I enter for the variables?



$dData['hostname'] = "hostname";
$dData['username'] = "username";
$dData['password'] = "password";
$dData['database'] = "database";
$dData['tablename'] = "orcasearch";

$dData['adminName'] = "admin";
$dData['adminPass'] = "password";

I can guess that the last two are my choices.

$dData['hostname'] = "localhost";
$dData['username'] = "username_search";
$dData['password'] = "anypassword";
$dData['database'] = "username_search";
$dData['tablename'] = "orcasearch";

$dData['adminName'] = "admin";
$dData['adminPass'] = "password";

The username_search assumes you create a database in CPanel called search, CPanel will create the database and prepend the domain's main username then an underscore, you don't do that, cpanel will do it. It is the same with the database user you create in CPanel but when creating the user use the same password that you put into $dData['password']. Then when you create those two things, you go back to the same screen you created them in and give the user full access to the database by choosing "all"

So to recap the Canel end of it, you log into CPanel and go to the MySQL section (not phpmyadmin)and do three things.
1. Create database - search
2. Create user - search
3. Give the user full access to the database

You can use whatever word you want, "search" is just an example. And don't use a password in $dData['password'] that you use on anything else, because it is sitting there in plain text in the config file. Any string of alpha numeric characters will do, you will never need to use it or remember it once the script is set up. You will need to remeber $dData['adminPass'] = "password"; though.

The tablename can probably be anything but since the developer calls it orcasearch I'd leave it at that. admin and password will be what you use to log into the backend of the script and initiate the spidering.

[edwurster]

Thanks Jim. You filled in a few must-know items. I was able to get the search up and running in less than a half-hour. There are many switches, options and tweaks that can be performed with orcasearch, so I think it is a winner. The control panel gives you a lot of control, although I didn't have to change much to get it going.

It doesn't look like it will take much to customize the results page either.

If the site content changes, then someone will have to come up with a cron to do that. I skipped it for now.

[Jim]

Thats good, I posted what basicly needs knowing for just about any php script that uses a database. I'll see about the entropy search problem. It's a recurring problem and has been for the last 2 years with the built in cpanel scripts. Maybe I'll grab them and post them here. We pay them about $1000 a month for the CPanel licences so I'm sure they won't mind if we use that as a workaround. Or maybe they will, but I'll find out.

[cmyksteve]

Orca Search looks very interesting. And with high marks from Jim and Ed, it's value doubled before I got it out of the box. :-)

Thanks for posting all these tips- guys.

Steve