A search within a website

SquirrelJ

Is it possible with PHP to create a search function on a website???

What i want to do is create a search box on my website where someone could type in say "football" then a results page would appear with the results listed in most relevant first order.

Can you do this with PHP???

Also could someone direct me to some tutorials where i could learn how to do this??

Finally is it possible to add some report functionality to it so i can see what people are searching for on my website???

Cheers

leatherback

Yes. It is possible.

You should advice us on how you have your website set up before any specific info can be given.

If you use a mysql database with your patches, you can use fulltext search. A decent explanation: http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/129/0.php.

If you create a table searchedfor, 2 cols, one text, one integer, you can store each individual word in that table, and update the count in the int. colum whenever that keyword is searched again (To avoid building a table with 100-000's of records which only contains 10 or so key words)

SquirrelJ

At the moment the site is just static pages written in php the only code i have so far is my php includes all the rest is html.

So there is no database functionality and there are no plans for the future of having dynamic pages. So the search will just cover the static pages

Cheers for your reply

leatherback

Ok, that makes it a lot less straightforward..

Have a look at http://www.htdig.org/index.html, which popped up from a quick search on this forum. people seem to be happy about it.

If you want to write it from scratch, I am not sure, but I think you are setting yourself up for a lot of work (e.g., the need to create an index of your site in a database or flat file, or write a routine which opens each file during a search, and reg_exp() the pages.)

Please.. If I am completely off, and there is an easy way to do it.. Do correct me please!

SquirrelJ

Ok then so if i only have static pages the process is a lot harder???

The link yougave me will that program link all my static pages then and create a search function around them??

Cheers

leatherback

I have never used the program in the link 😃 Just picked it up from the forum, as it was mention in a number of threads.

In a database, you have all the data sitting, and a search-function is pre-build in your database. You'll have to program that yourself for static pages, making it harder. Sorry 🙁