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MS Index Server Usage

There are a couple steps involved in having your site automatically indexed and searchable using Index Server.

  1. Add descriptive tags to your searchable pages
  2. Contact Superb Technical Support to make sure your site has been properly indexed
  3. Create the Search Page
  4. Create an Internet Data Query File
  5. Create an HTML Template File

Add descriptive tags to your searchable pages

When you create pages for your site, You should include "meta" tags within your HTML documents to increase the amount of information given to the index server for indexing your pages -- these can be created in Front Page, or inserted manually in your document as follows:

<meta name="Author" content="Joe Q. Public">
<meta name="Description" content="Search our web">
<meta name="Subject" content="Search page">
<meta name="FORMATTER" content="Microsoft FrontPage 2.0">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 2.0">

This way, even if a search parameter (such as the author, or an accurate description of the content) is not included directly in the text of the html page, it will be referenced as such in the index.
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Making sure Your Site is Indexed

Contact Superb Technical Support and ask them to index your site. Once they have confirmed this, you are ready to try your search page. 

Create the Search Page

In this section, we will outline a basic HTML form search page. Sample code can be found below:

for page under your web root -- /search/index.htm

(it would be physically in d:\home\username\public_html\search\index.htm)

<---start sample code---> 


<html>

<head>



<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<meta name="Author" content="Your Name here">

<meta name="Description" content="What the page is about">

<meta name="Subject" content="Search page">



<title><This is a Search Page!!></title>



</head>

<body>



<h1>Search our web site</h1>





<!-- the form action tells the page where to put the information -->

<!-- gathered from the html form -->



<form action="query.idq" method="GET">



<!-- The are supplied as hidden parameters, so that you control -->

<!-- the scope and parameters of the search. These are in the form of -->

<!-- variables that are passed on to the query page -->



<input type="hidden" name="CiMaxRecordsPerPage" value="10">

<input type="hidden" name="CiScope" value=/docs>

<input type="hidden" name="TemplateName" value="query">

<input type="hidden" name="CiSort" value="rank[d]">

<input type="hidden" name="HTMLQueryForm" value=/search/index.htm>



<!-- now the actual form where the query is input, and the buttons-->



Enter your query below:

<input type="text" size="55" maxlength="100" name="UserRestriction">

<BR>

<input type="SUBMIT" value="SEARCH">

<input type="RESET" value="CLEAR">





</body>

</html>

<---end sample code--->

The hidden fields above aren't required to be hidden if you wish to allow the user to set sort order, number of items returned, etc. What they are doing is passing along the values as variables that will come into play in either the query or the formatting of the results

    • CiMaxRecordsPerPage specifies the maximum number of records displayed per page.
    • CiScope specifies the "root" for the search. Here, we're limiting the search to all directories and documents under the "docs" dir in our website. Just leave "/" as the value to search your entire web site.
    • TemplateName specifies the name of the file to use to display the results.
    • CiSort determines the sort order. rank[d] for descending or rank[a] for ascending.
    • HTMLQueryForm this designates the form you are using for your html query -- should point to this form (this puts it in a variable form that is passed along)

Creating Your IDQ File

This file is the actual query file. It would be under your web root at -- /search/query.idq

(it would be physically in d:\home\username\public_html\search\query.idq)

<---start sample code--->


[Query]

CiCatalog=d:\home\username\public_html

CiColumns = filename, size, rank, characterization, vpath, DocTitle, write

CiFlags=DEEP

CiScope=%CiScope%

CiRestriction=(%UserRestriction%) & #vpath "*.htm" &! #vpath "\_vti_"

CiMaxRecordsInResultSet=300

CiMaxRecordsPerPage=%CiMaxRecordsPerPage%

CiTemplate=/Scripts/%TemplateName%.htx

CiSort=%CiSort%

CiForceUseCi=true

<---end sample code--->

 

  • CiCatalog tells the query where to locate your catalogue -- if the index has been set up properly, there will be a catalog.wci directory in your public_html directory. You DO NOT include the name of the catalog folder in the path leading to it.
  • CiColumns determines the columns of information returned by the query.
  • CiFlags is set to deep or shallow -- deep includes subdirectories, shallow only includes that directory.
  • CiRestrictions is the User Restriction from earlier (in the search index.htm -- you will notice that all the other variables are passed along as well) plus logical restrictions on the search -- in this case, all of the instances that were searched for, that also match "*.htm" (ie that are html documents), and do NOT match having "_vti_" in their path (ie Front Page extension hidden directories).

Creating an HTML Template file

Now that you have made your query, you need to display the results. You do this by passing the results to an HTML Template File (.htx), which was specified in your .idq file by the CiTemplate parameter. In our example, your file would be under your web root at -- /scripts/query.htx

(it would be physically in d:\home\username\public_html\scripts\query.htx)

This is in the scripts directory sheerly for instructions sake -- if you had your permissions set to the tightest (so that the .htm files were ONLY read, you could put this in a scripts folder where things had execute permissions, as the htx file actually has to "run"). But you could change the path and have it in your search folder instead.

The code for this is rather lengthy, so it can be referenced . There are comments throughout the code, and you can change what it does and how it works by modifying the code (including graphics, etc -- the default code has a reference to an MS graphic -- you probably will want to include another one).

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