Looking for Local Site Search Recommendation: ht://Dig?

[jleland]

Hi,
We are about to implement a local site search for a Washington DC non-profit, academic social action research site that's got about 200 pages. I'd like an inexpensive but fast, accurate site search solution that's CGI-based, inexpensive and will run on Linux. We're thinking of using ht://Dig. I would love to hear feedback on that solution, or other recommendations from those more experienced with this type of search implementation than myself. Thanks in advance for your support!
Jon

[sun818]

Hi, I've never used ht://Dig myself so I can not speak on it. There are some solutions listed in Google Web Directory [directory.google.com]. Personally, I've used Fluid Dynamics Search Engine, but was not impressed by the relevancy or the output formatting.

[victor]

You can add Google itself to your site for free -- and configure it to search just within your site:

[google.com...]

Of course, the index will only be updated completely once per dance (about monthly, disregarding Fresh). With ht://dig or equivalent you can update the index whenever you want.

[solution]

I am currently using ht://Dig

Once you have it all set up it is great. The issues are that is has to be compiled on the server. Many web hosts won't compile programs on their server. I was lucky with my host. He compiled it and set it up for me.

It is pretty much fully customisable. I have it set so that it re-indexes the site every night. If I upload pages during the day, they will be in the index the next day.

If you have someone who can set it up for you then go for it. Otherwise be prepared to spend a day working out all the options to get it going.

Nick.

[dingman]

be prepared to spend a day working out all the options to get it going.

I needed more than that. Of course, most of the time was taken up by trying to get my very non-technical boss to explain how she wanted it set up in terms I could understand.

[jleland]

Thanks you all. Good input. We definitely need to reindex more often that Google would.

One user also offered an alternative <http://www.perlfect.com/freescripts/search/> via private email.

Thanks again to you all for your support. I'm a newbie to this board and it feels good. :)

[Brett_Tabke]

Like most of the free se's, relevance is a problem with htdig.

[littleman]

FDSE is pretty good, it is free if you leave the link at the bottom. Aspseek is great, but you need server level access to use it last I checked. Mnogosearch is also good one which I believe shares some code with Aspseek -- both are GPL.

Namazu [namazu.org] looks okay.