FrontLook.com Newsletter Tip

Volume 3 - Issue 5 - August 2003

Adding a Site Search Engine Page to your Web in 3 Easy Steps

Its easy to setup a FrontLook Site Search Engine on your web site. It is assumed that you have already installed the FrontLook Site Search Engine product (demo version is available on your personal download page)..

Before you begin - Verify Web Server can ASP or PHP
Before you begin, your web site server must be capable of running Active Server Pages (ASP) or PHP 4 or greater. You may need to contact your hoster to know for sure.

Note: If you are editing a disk web locally and then publishing the web to a live server, you will not be able to test the search engine until you publish the web to live server. You will be able to set everything up on the local web and then test it on your live web.

Step 1 - Setup your Search Areas
The first thing to do is setup your search areas. A search area is a set of pages on your web that have subject matter in common. Search areas help your visitor get the information he is looking for by allowing him to choose from a set of predefined page sets. A typical search area breakdown is outlined below:

Once you have decided on your search areas, bring your web up in FrontPage and select the Insert->FrontLook Site Search Engine->Edit Search Areas menu item.

Insert->Frontlook Site Search Engine menu

The Edit Search Areas window will appear.

Edit Search Areas window

The "Search Areas" list will initially contain only the "Default" search area. The "Search Area Files" list will contain the files and folders in your web. Any checked items in this panels belong to the search area selected in the "Search Areas" list and these files will be searched when your viewer selects that search area.

You can rename, create or delete new search areas using the "Add...", "Edit..." or "Delete" buttons respectively. The "Move Up" and Move Down buttons will allow you to reorder the list of search areas. In the example above, two new search areas have been added to the "Search Areas" list; "Interests" and "Support". The Default search area has been renamed to "All" (shortcut: double click to edit) and it will be used as the default search area.

Once you have defined all your search areas, you must attach one or more pages to each search area. To attach pages in your web to a search area, click on a search area in the "Search Areas" list and then check all the pages in the "Search Area Files" list that you want to be searched when the search area is selected by the viewer. You can use the "None" button to deselect all pages in the web for that search area. The "All" button will attach all the pages in the web to the selected search area. The "Web Nav" button will attach only the pages that are part of the FrontPage navigation structure of the web to the selected search area.

Once the search areas have been setup and the pages attached to each search area, press the "OK" button to save the configuration. You can change and re-edit the search areas later by bringing up the Edit Search Areas window again.

Also you can edit the pages titles and keywords for each page by double-clicking on the page in the "Search Area Files" list box.

Step 2 - Insert the Search Page
Now that the search areas have been setup, the Search Page can be inserted onto your web by selecting the Insert->FrontLook Site Search Engine->Insert Search Page... menu item. The the "Insert Search Page" dialog will appear.

Insert Search Page dialog

You can set the file name, folder, page title and other page properties using the "Insert Search Page" dialog. Once you have set the various page properties, press the OK button. A new page will be added to your web and folders list.

New Search Page

You will note the page has a ".asp" file extension. Please do not change the file extension, this is required for the server to recognize the page and execute the search.

Note: If you are editing a disk web locally and then publishing the web to a live server, you will not be able to test the search engine until you publish the web to live server. You will be able to set everything up on the local web and then test it on your live web.

Step 3 - Publish Your Web and Test the Search Page
To try out your new search page, you will mostly likely need to publish your web to your server. You can do this is the normal fashion using the "File->Publish Web..." menu. Once the web is published, enter the URL of the page in your browser and test out the search page by entering a search term and press the Search button. The page will be refreshed and the results of the search will appear in summary form as illustrated below:

Search Page with results

Note the search term is highlighted in the summary. Change the search area or search term and try again.