[thelist] Site search - what do ya know?

[Rob Smith]

Hi Tom,

We're using the Google Mini and loving it. The upfront cost is about
$3,000 for the box itself, which sits next to the web server. The mini
occupies 1U in the server rack. The mini will keep up with about 150000
pages. After that you'll need it's big brother. The aesthetics are
maintained via XLST, XML, XSL, and (X)HTML. No server side code support
is available. Once you understand how the XSLT Stylesheet code works,
It's all downhill. Here's a copy and paste from the start of our
stylesheet on http://google.lexjet.com (about 200 lines down on the
stylesheet):

<!--
**********************************************************************
 My global page header/footer (can be customized)
 
**********************************************************************
-->
<xsl:template name="my_page_header">
  <!-- *** replace the following with your own xhtml code or replace the
text 
   between the xsl:text tags with html escaped html code *** -->
  <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">
&lt;LINK REL=&quot;STYLESHEET&quot; ... (and so on.)

You can specify which areas to start crawling from, which urls not to
crawl, incorporate keyword matching, it automatically picks up the "Did
you mean" and you can even customize that area too. It does offer basic
reporting elements on key words and phrases used over time. And you get
a free Google t-shirt with purchase :-) which I wear on t-shirt Friday
at work. Hands down it's a worthwhile investment if you can get past the
initial cost.

Back to the XSLT stylesheet. Google provides you with a basic template
that comes with the box. It's pretty much plug and play ready. You can
customize the XSLT sheet to your liking adjusting link colors, font
sizes, caching properties, logo's, etc. There is also a secret support
group available to all mini owners.

The next thing on my to do list to figure out how to get a dropdown box
next to the search box to search separate sub collections. 

Speaking of which, sub collections allows you to have different search
areas per sub domain... or folder. In our example, our mini appliance by
default searches our entire site. However, if there is a specific
folder, like technical data sheets (all .pdf's) that want to be searched
explicitly, then we can create a sub collection to search that specific
folder with a couple of clicks. The default license comes with/for one
domain. Sub domains/Collections are unlimited afaik.

I could go on and on, but my wife will start wondering when I'm coming
home :-)


Rob Smith
LexJet
rob.smith at lexjet.com
http://www.lexjet.com
(800)453-9538
(941)330-1210 Int'l
(941)330-1220 Fax
1680 Fruitville Road, 3rd Floor
Sarasota, FL 34236