August 3, 2002

  • Since Xanga's search is chronically and possibly irremediably broken, I'm testing a full-text search engine that's free as long as the site is under 500 indexed pages: Atomz.com search engine


    It seems to work very well so far (see below), though I seem to have duplicate entries for some things and may need to tweak some filters to clean things up.


    However, I have more than 500 pages.  And since I don't intend to dish out bucks for this, I'll probably need to triage the earlier months.  ...Or what, and this just occured to me , I can to do is design two search calendars: "2002" and "2001 and earlier".  Since each will encompass less than 500 pages, they'll still be free.


    ...Okay: Ive designed a set of two. For some reason (that I'll investigate later), the "2002" search overlaps back into "2001" a bit.  But better an overlap than an omission!




    So I've now put the two "simple" search boxes at the left of the page in my *More Stuff*; and the two "advanced" ones at the bottom of the page.  I still need to tweak some more html and make them blend in better to the page.  But, for now, I'm just happy to be able to at least  search my site again! 


    Update: I've just created another search, again available side and bottom, but this one is of the entry page (or last five blogs) of my 275-member SIR (Except for a few like seanmeister whose entry page is a skin of mass departure).


    As an example of usage, I was able to track down a couple of my readers mentioning *nfp* and able to determine that at least 167 of my 275 readers used the word *love* in at least one of their last 5 posts.


    By the way, this search is much more powerful than Xanga's was since it allows for filters and qualfiers and some boolean type stuff!


    Post-Update: I've just created two more searches, again available side and bottom. These two are of my 600+ subscribers "Last 5" blogs. Again. I needed to split them into two groups of less than 500 each.


    So in summary, I should have all my own blogs indexed, and the "Last 5" blogs of everyone I read and all that read me, as defined by subscriptions. That's enough for now!


    Now all I have to do is re-index them once a day--a simple 10 minute chore, that, if I take the time, I can even schedule Atomz to automate.

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