GSP
Quick Navigator

Search Site

Unix VPS
A - Starter
B - Basic
C - Preferred
D - Commercial
MPS - Dedicated
Previous VPSs
* Sign Up! *

Support
Contact Us
Online Help
Handbooks
Domain Status
Man Pages

FAQ
Virtual Servers
Pricing
Billing
Technical

Network
Facilities
Connectivity
Topology Map

Miscellaneous
Server Agreement
Year 2038
Credits
 

USA Flag

 

 

SWISH-E - Web Site Search Utility

bullet SWISH-E: Simple Keyword Index and Search Engine - Enhanced
A convenient method to allow clients to retrieve information from a web site is by building an index of the web pages and providing search capability. This may seem like a daunting task, but with a few tools this task becomes very easy.

Normally web indexing and searching requires a complex, hard to use and install WAIS-based solution, however a small yet powerful program SWISH-E, (which is based on SWISH written by Kevin Hughes), can be used to fulfill your web indexing and searching needs.

 

bullet Installation
To install SWISH-E on your Virtual Server, connect via Telnet or SSH and run this command:

% vinstall swish-e

NOTE: Swish-e requires the Perl LWP module to run.

 

bullet Usage
To use SWISH-E, do the following.
  1. Create a SWISH-E configuration file for your Virtual Server. You may copy or edit the following sample configuration files to meet your needs, according to your Virtual Server O/S:

    • FreeBSD & Solaris [ SWISH-E 2.0.5 ]
      ~/usr/local/swish-e-2.0.5/conf/user.config

    Make sure you change all occurrences of LOGIN_NAME in the files to match the login name of your Virtual Server. Other modifications may also be necessary. You should become familiar with the FileRule s section of the configuration file. By default, SWISH-E will not index files in directories containing a .htaccess file. If you have a directory that contains a .htaccess file, and would like it indexed, then comment out that FileRules line by placing a "#" as the f irst character in the line.

    NOTE: Create a separate configuration file for each search on your Virtual Server. For example, if you have several users on your server that require separate searches for their own directories, create a separate configuration file for each user. Then use the configuration files to create separate index files for each search.


  2. To create a Web site index, run the swish-e program like this, depending on your Virtual Server O/S (and substituting the name of your SWISH-E configuration file you created in the previous step for CONFIG_FILE):
    • FreeBSD & Solaris
      % virtual /usr/local/swish-e/bin/swish-e -S http
        -c /usr/local/swish-e/conf/CONFIG_FILE

    When you run the SWISH-E executable, a SWISH-E index file will be generated. The name of the SWISH-E index file is that which you specified as the value for the IndexFile variable in the SWISH-E configuration file.

 

bullet The Search Form
Powered by SWISH-E To install the search on your web site you will need to download the Search Form and store it somewhere in your usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs directory structure. Feel free to customize the form, add graphics, etc. But be sure that the variable name for each input field is not altered.

The form can be customized for your Virtual Private Servers by simply changing the occurrence of SWISH_INDEX_FILE to the name of the swish-e index which you specified as the value for the IndexFile variable in the SWISH-E configuration file. You may hide the maxresults field by simply using a type=hidden argument with the input tag.

 

bullet The Search CGI
  • FreeBSD & Solaris
    The CGI script is installed into your www/cgi-bin/ directory with the name search.pl.sample. You will need to change the filename to search.pl and make it executable. From the SSH or Telnet prompt, run the following commands:

    % mv search.pl.sample search.pl
    % chmod 655 search.pl
    
    You can customize the appearance of the search CGI, if you wish.
    Two subroutines in the ~/www/cgi-bin/search.pl file, print_header and print_footer are used to print out header and footer information. You can find these by searching for the string MODIFY ME in the script. You can then insert whatever HTML you want between the line print <<_HTML_; and _HTML_.

Feel free to modify these functions such that the CGI outputs pages that are in synch with the motifs of the rest of your site.

 

bullet More Information
For more information and documentation see:


Toll Free 1-866-GSP-4400 • 1-301-464-9363 • service@gsp.com
Copyright © 1994-2016 GSP Services, Inc.