Getting Started:
Getting your search facility up and running couldn't be easier. Simply upload "default.asp" and "searchsimon.css" to a directory of your choice ("search" is recommended) then type the appropriate URL into your favourite browser.

Configuration Options:
The Site Search contains a substantial number of user-definable options to help best match your requirements. These range from controlling the which parts of the site to search, through formatting the results and on to specific "Hit Point" values for each match within a document.

The appearance of the Search page is controlled from a CSS file. This allows Fonts, Colors, Backgrounds and Link behaviour to be changed rapidly and better match the design of your site.

More specific configuration options are located at the top of the search script and their use is explained below:

configBodyTitle = "My Site Search"
This option allows you to specify the title text to appear at the top of the search page.

configTableAlign = "left"
This option allows you to specify the horizontal position of the search table within the page. Values are "left", "right" or "center".

configTableWidth = "625"
This allows you to specify the width of the search table. Values can be any number of pixels or percentage of the page or parent table. eg. "500", "750", "50%", "100%"

configLeftGap = "20"
This allows you to specify the width of the column which houses the results item numbers.

configSearchDir = "/"
This allows you to limit the search facility to a specific directory within your site. The default value of "/" will search the entire site, "/documents/" will only search within a "documents" directory, "/documents/public" will search only the "public" directory within a "documents" directory.

configShowAuthor = True
configShowKeywords = False
configShowDescription = True
configShowAbstract = True
configShowURL = True
configShowFileSize = True
configShowLastModifed = True
These options (True or False) control whether various document properties should be shown on the results page. These properties are pulled from the document attributes or following HTML tags:
Author <meta name="author" content="Simon Gibson">
Keywords <meta name="keywords" content="Document, Keywords">
Description <meta name="description" content="Document Description">

configAllowedFileTypes = "htm,html,asp,aspx"
This comma-delimited list controls which files can be returned for any given search. Any file extensions not in the list will be ignored.

configBlockedFiles = "secret.htm,password.htm"
This comma-delimited list controls which files should be ignored by the search engine. This option is particularly useful where sensitive files are stored within your site.

configBlockedPaths = "/cgi-bin/,/personal/photos/"
This comma-delimited list controls which paths (and their subdirectories) should be ignored by the search engine.

configBlockedDirs = "/images/,/_vti_cnf/"
This comma-delimited list controls which directory names should be ignored by the search engine. Subdirectories will continue to be searched. This option is particularly useful if you have FrontPage extensions enabled for your site.

configResultsPerPage = 10
This numeric value specifies the number of results that should be displayed on one page. Typical values could be 10 (the default), 25 or 5.

configMaxResults = 100
This numeric value specifies the maximum number of results that can be returned for any given search. This option will also flag the user if their search returns more matches, asking them to be more specific.

configBoolean = "AND"
This option defines the default Boolean operator for search phrases where one has not be entered. Possible values are "AND" and "OR". This value is overriden when the user specifies their own operator (eg. Search OR Simon).

configTitleMatchPoints = 10
configKeywordMatchPoints = 5
configDescriptionMatchPoints = 2
configAuthorMatchPoints = 1
configAbstractMatchPoints = 1
configFileNameMatchPoints = 1
These values specify the importance of a match in any of the document properties or contents. For many users, the default values will be more than adequate. However, if you find that documents tend not to be returned in the most appropriate order, you can "tweak" these settings to get the desired results.