Last Updated: January 20, 2000

Excite for Web Servers

Excite for Web Servers makes it easy for you to add Excite, Inc.'s advanced concept-based searching to your Web site.

Excite for Web Servers provides a simple Web-browser interface for doing all the things necessary to enable concept-based searching of collections of documents -- administering, indexing, and searching over the collections. In particular, one can:

• define a document collection -- that is, specify a set of documents to be considered a single collection over which one can search,
• design customized pages for displaying to users who wish to search over that collection,
• index that collection, monitoring the progress, and
• search the collection.

With Excite for Web Servers, it's easy to set up concept-based-searchable Web sites in minutes.

1. Installation
2. Configuration
3. Documentation
4. Alternatives to Excite

Installation

To install Excite 1.1, telnet or SSH to your Virtual Server and do the following:

1. Run the Excite install script in the /usr/local/contrib directory of your virtual server's host machine.

   PLEASE NOTE: Excite for Web Servers requires about 4MB of server disk space. Be sure that you have this space available under your virtual server disk space quota before installing Excite.

     % cd    (this will put you in your home directory)
     % /usr/local/contrib/excite-install
   

   When the install script prompts you for an Excite password, enter a password you want to use to access the Excite online configuration CGI programs.

Configuration

Excite 1.1 includes several administration CGI programs to help you configure your searches. To create a new search index, do the following:

1. Access the main Excite administration page.

http://your-domain.com/cgi-bin/AT-admin.cgi

Use the password that you chose when you originally installed Excite.

• Excite calls the set of documents you want searched a collection. To create a new collection enter a name for your collection in the first text box and click the Create New Collection button.

• You should now see the Configure New Collection form. The collection index at the top of the page should be set correctly already.

  In the Choose the Files to Index section of the form you can chose which files/directories you want to include in the collection. The collection is set by default to include the /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs directory, which is your entire Virtual Server's web site.

  The Index Filter section allows you to fine tune the inclusion of pages in the search by using filters you can define. Click on the documentation link for more help.

  When you finish configuring the collection, click the Save button at the bottom of the page.

• You can now create an index for the newly configured collection. Click the Index button. The next page will show you the configuration of your collection and you can click on the Index button on this page to begin the indexing process. The process will run in the background on your Virtual Server. You can monitor progress by clicking on the View Logs button.

  The Excite indexing process usually requires a lot of memory. You may not be able to create your index using the CGI admin programs above. If there an unspecified error occurs during the indexing run, check the bottom of the Verbose Log by clicking the Verbose Log button. If you see a line like this then Excite ran out of memory while creating the index:

    Virtual memory exceeded in `new'
  

  But, it will likely be possible to create the index using a simple command line utility in the Excite distribution. In the usr/local/etc/excite directory that was created when you installed Excite, there is an excite-index script. To index a collection using this script, run it from the command line, passing it the name of your collection:

    % ./excite-index <collection_name>
  

  It will probably take several minutes for the indexing to finish.

• Excite also has a utility to create the search page for you. Click the Generate button. After filling out the form, click the Generate button at the bottom of the page. Your search page will be located at:

http://your_domain.com/Excite/AT-<collection_name>query.html

Documentation

The Excite 1.1 distribution contains documentation that will be installed on your Virtual Server when you install the software. It is accessible at:

http://your_domain.com/Excite/AT-help.html

You can also get more information about Excite at the Excite for Web Servers home page:

• Excite for Web Servers Home Page

Alternatives

The SWISH-E search utility is also available to be installed on all Virtual Servers.

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