dtSearch Web Quick Start

dtSearch Web is a search engine that you can install on a Web server to publish documents on your web site.  It can perform fast indexed searches using the same search features that dtSearch Desktop supports -- fuzzy searching, phonic searching, natural language searching, boolean logic, proximity, etc.  Indexed documents can be in any format that dtSearch supports, such as HTML, PDF, XML, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, RTF, and ZIP archives. 

After a search, dtSearch Web will convert documents as needed to HTML for display, with hits highlighted.  If a retrieved document is already in HTML, dtSearch Web will display it with hits highlighted while preserving the HTML attributes (so links and images will work in your browser). 

dtSearch Web requires Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) version 4 or later.  Internet Information Server is included in Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003 Server.

This Quick Start will describe how to get a basic search form running on your web site quickly.  You can create any number of search forms, each with its own set of option settings and index selections.  For information on setting up dtSearch Web to run from a CD, see CD Publishing (Overview).

1.   Install the dtSearch and dtSearch Web program files on your web server. 
If you have dtSearch Web on CD, run the setup program to install.  If you downloaded dtSearch Web from the internet, follow the download instructions to open the dtSearch Web archive and install the files.

2.   Build an index of your documents
dtSearch Web uses the same indexes as dtSearch, so if you already have a dtSearch index of the documents, you can use this index with dtSearch Web.  If not, follow the dtSearch Quick Start to set up an index.

If your site includes dynamically-generated content rather than static HTML and PDF files, you can use the dtSearch Spider to index it.

Note: When creating indexes to use with dtSearch Web, enable both the "Cache text" and "Cache original documents" options to ensure that search results and highlighted documents appear quickly.
 

3.   Make a virtual directory for your documents
Designate each folder that contains documents to be published as a virtual directory.   Open Internet Services Manager, select the web site, and click Action > New > Virtual Directory.
 

4.   Run dtSearch Web Setup
In dtSearch, click File > dtSearch Web Setup.  dtSearch Web Setup will display a drop-down list of the web sites on your server, and below it a list of the virtual directories defined for each site. 

5.   Select the web site to use with dtSearch Web
If you have more than one web site on this server, you can install dtSearch Web on each of them, or just one.  (To install dtSearch Web on additional web sites, repeat the procedure described in this Quick Start for each site.)
 

6.   Select the folder where dtSearch Web should be installed
dtSearch Web Setup will create a "dtSearch" folder under the folder you select where the dtSearch Web files will be installed.  Click the Install or Upgrade button to install the dtSearch Web files in the folder you selected. 

If the folder you selected does not already have 'Execute' permission enabled, dtSearch Web Setup will ask if it can enable 'Execute' permission in the folder so  dtSearch Web can run from that folder.
 

7.   Build a Search Form for your site
Click the Build Search Form... button to build a search form to use with your site.  You can make as many search forms as you want for each site.  After dtSearch Web Setup has generated a search form, you can use an HTML editor such as Microsoft FrontPage to edit it to fit into your web site. 

In the Form Builder dialog box, click the Indexes tab to select indexes for the search form.   Check the box next to each index to include it on your search form. 
 

8.   Click OK to build the search form. 
After the search form is built, dtSearch Web will open it in your browser so you can try out a search.  Once you have a basic search form working, you can run Form Builder again to customize the search form, the appearance of search results, and other options.
 

Logging
To enable logging in dtSearch Web, check the Log document access or Log searches checkboxes in the File tab of the Form Builder dialog box.  For information on customizing logging, see "Generated Files".