Monday, 26 March 2007

Article: PHP Search Engine Showdown

Michael Douma in an article in PHP DevCenter teaches you to build an internal search engine in your own web site. He emphasizes the need for search tools and says it makes your information accessible and also increases the time visitors spend on your site. An internal search engine may be a necessity if your site has more than 100 pages of content, he explains. He rationalises that if the purpose of your site is to provide in-depth information on a variety of specific topics, it's ineffective to force a visitor to browse through your site for the information

He explains the article under the following heads:

Hosted Vs. Local

He says, when selecting a search tool, you have two options—a hosted remote search engine or a local search service. If you have a hosted site (a site that is not on your server), you can take advantage of free or fee-based services provided by companies that host search engines on their servers. You have to register on their site.

Michael points out the disadvantages. He says, by installing a local search engine indexing and maintenance is your responsibility, and that the index and installation files will use space on your hard drive. You may also incur costs associated with software acquisition although free, open source software is available.

Getting Started

Integrating a search engine into your site is easy if you prepare the site correctly, he says. He warns that there are several issues, which needs to be considered before setting up the site. These issues are discussed under the following subheads:

• Physical issues: Michael says, you should have enough available disk space for the index; you need adequate processing power; and you have to always remember to update the index after every change you make to your site. You will need to install the appropriate PHP software installed on the server, as well as MySQL if you're using MySQL databases for your indexes. There are few search engines that you can configure using browser-based graphic interfaces. Others may require command-line root access on the server.
• The pages: he says to make sure that the search results list appears the way you want it to, including the relevant page titles, meta descriptions, and text. Page titles are the most important elements in your search results, so make sure they are relevant to the context of the page.