The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Web Site Indexing/Searching Recommendations

Web Site Indexing/Searching Recommendations

I want to provide a search capability:

- some parts of site are password-protected
- may have multiple base urls
- free is best, but can pay
- server is IIS

Looking for recommendations and tales from the field on:

- Appl Serv Provider-type solutions (site is indexed by third party)
- server based solutions (site is indexed by server-installed software)

steved
Sunday, October 12, 2003

Why not use the built-in Windows Indexing Service?

Ankur
Sunday, October 12, 2003

Last time I checked the Fluid Dynamics Search Engine was one of the best. Don't know if it works with IIS though. I guess it will as it is written in perl:

http://www.xav.com/scripts/search/

jan Derk
Monday, October 13, 2003

http://www.swish-e.org

Free, open-source. Works quite well, if you're willing to take the time to configure it to your needs.

Tim Van Steenburgh
Monday, October 13, 2003

I thought IIS Indexing service was incredibly difficult, mostly due to the documentation.

I'm currently using Verity, which was very easy to set up. I wrote my own flag for PW protected areas, but there might be a better way.

On the free front, I've heard good things about htDig (linux only I think) and atomz (which is free up to a certain count).

Lee
Monday, October 13, 2003