"Help Answers" compiled from Ringmasters-l mail list

Web Ring Help


WEB SITE SEARCH ENGINE

Any one know how it would be possible to setup your own search engine?

If you mean a search tool that will allow visitors to look through your own pages, there are several options that may fit the bill (no pun intended in the direction of our beloved owner of the Dharma Ring;-)
Unfortunately, the ones I'm familiar with all come with some technical gotchas. Here are some places to start.
If you can't install CGI scripts at your site, the options below may work:
http://www.i-depth.com/
A for-fee based operation that offers several remotely hosted CGI tools, including a text search utility. Runs ten bucks per month. I don't know how useful the search tool is.
http://www.123webmaster.com/newowner.shtml
"Search 98": remotely hosted and no fee. I've never tried it; can't vouch for its operation. Considering the price, it may be worth a look.
http://www.webtoys.net/
A remotely hosted keyword search engine with boolean capabilities. Your web site is indexed nightly by their spider. You can specify areas of your site to exclude, or use Meta tags to exclude searches (the search engine follows standard robot exclusion protocols). Fee:$35 per year.
http://index.thunderstone.com/texis/indexsite/
This one, "Webinator," is a remotely hosted search engine that has good features, and it's free. BUT: You can't index a site on a different Class B network than the one you're logged into. In other words, if you want to index "www.mydomain.com" and its IP address is 206.111.111, you can't set-up Webinator unless you're coming from 206.111.111. The URL to index has to be a unqiuely registered domain name, not a domain that hosts many sites.
If your server allows you to install your own scripts:
http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/search.shtml
Matt Wright's "Simple Search," the one I use in various guises at my site. Easy to configure, free, and...well, simple. No frills.
NOTE: This is the one used on this Web Ring Help Site.
http://www.extropia.com/Scripts/keyword_search.html
Selena Sol's (no it's an alias; Selena is really a guy) search script. Written in Perl, and free. More muscle than Matt's, and requires a little more tweaking to get it working.
http://awsd.com/scripts/websearch/index.shtml
WebSearch, by Darryl Burgdorf, searches the basic text as well as ALT tags and any information contained in META "keywords" and "description" tags. The script scores the match URLs based upon the frequency with which the requested key terms appear in the documents, and also lists the date on which each file was last modified. Also requires the "find.pl" module as an include library; available at the same site.
http://www.cs.byu.edu/index_search.html
An ALIWEB-type search utility from Brigham Young University. Not the easiest thing in the world to configure, but it's free.
http://iamwww.unibe.ch/~scg/Src/Doc/htgrep.html
Htgrep is an old standby written by Oscar Nierstrasz. It's a CGI script written in Perl that allows you to query any document accessible to your HTTP server on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. This one is, again, not the easiest thing to configure.
http://www.xav.com/scripts/search/
Intermediate Search is an internal search engine very similar to Matt Wright's Simple Search. This script expands on Matt's by taking into account new Meta tags, and the list of hits for a particular query is also weighted by relevance. Free.
http://htdig.sdsu.edu/
A cool utility called "ht://Dig" that includes fuzzy-logic searches; written by Andrew Scherpbier at San Diego State University, and it's free. BUT: You'll need to install it on a UNIX Web server with both a C and a C++ compiler available...and the thing chews up disk space for breakfast
At least some places to start. Happy hunting!
-- Ed Williams

Try Bravenet Services. They offer a wide variety of free resources, including a search engine. They are at
http://www.bravenet.com
-- Vince Matal

You can recieve a free and NON-java fully working website search engine from
http://www.bravenet.com/
(is that supposed to be "bravenet.com"?)
plus other services like a guestbook a form server and a few more great things!
-- WESLEY MASON

If you look at www.freefind.com you can get a free search engine for your site here,and you can customise it too:).
-- Tina Clarke



CHAT ROOMS
You guys know of any place I can get a free "chat room" and install it on my web site ? I think this is another way to promote your sig in addition to mail-listing.

I don't use chat rooms myself, but I did a quick Altavista search and came up with "The Chat Suite" from Watershed Liveware, URL:
http://goodbs.com/chat/
and a Java Sites Links List
http://www.houseofhelms.com/htmlpages/toychest/java/javalink.html
which at least look like possibilities for you. Hopefully other people will have more pointers.
-- Anitra Freeman

Is it possible to have a Chat Room without using Java?

Yes, you can. There are several non-Java based chat packages available on the Net. The Tool Zone offers a very nice, customizable HTML based chat room. They are at
http://www.toolzone.com/
-- Vince Matal

I use
http://www.beseen.com
for a chat room on my site. No Java required.
-- Virginia

Back to Main MenuUp to Top of Page


Launched 2-13-98

Copyright © 1997/1998 Morgan Smith
All rights reserved. All Images,
downloads and text are ths sole
property of Morgan Smith and cannot be used
without written permission of the
this publisher.