Search

User Aids

Searching the Web

1. 'Google is your friend' tm, and the 'Customize Google' tool (see Browser Extensions) does all kinds of things to help you search using Google, AND easily opens up the world of search engines by letting you replicate your search across other engines in a click.
2. http://www.googletutor.com/ Google Tutor helps you learn and understand Google
3. http://www.googleguide.com/ Google Guide helps you learn and understand Google

Searching for Multimedia

When searching for unrestricted graphics content, it is hard to beat the huge commons of Wiki commons. Use the search engine on toolserver.org to find the images or other media you're looking for. http://toolserver.org/~tangotango/mayflower/ Any image found there can be used under the terms of the (creative commons) license listed -- meaning it can be used here or on your website.

Native (Application) Search

Applications such as this wiki (mediawiki), and CMS systems (e.g. Drupal) obviously know their own content. So, if you are looking for something and want the best results for those applications, you should make use of the direct search facilities in the application. Note that this wiki and the CMS systems also provide an 'OpenSearch' implementation that lets you use your browser's search toolbar to directly search these applications.

The MediaWiki system now includes a Ajax 'suggest' feature while you type in the search box. Setting is a UPO or User Preference Option that you control in your user settings.

1. mw:Search helps you learn and understand the search capabilities of this system
2. The Lucene backend used on Wikipedia mw:Extension:Lucene-search can be used for large-scale installations where the built-in search is not sufficient. Note that the simplest enhancement you can make to a small-scale installation is to tweak the MySQL stopwords and word-length.

General

Google offers a service called the Google Custom Search Engine. The Google CSE is much like the 'normal' Google, but is configured to include only domains that you want. Additionally, the domains can be grouped into 'realms' that can be used to assist the user to find content according to functional area.

An example implementation can be seen at the OASIS search site http://search.oasis-open.org

The main limitations of the Google CSE are that

1. The content must be public (can't be used for your private Intranet)
2. The index will not cover an unlimited amount of content
3. The index will not allow custom data formats or indexes that you create... it's Google's algorithms for better or for worse.

To meet these needs, use a product like mnoGoSearch mw:Apache_Solr or mw:Nutch which you are free to install and configure to suit your requirements.

See wp:Category:Internet_search_engines for a list of search engine solutions.

Editors

1. the Template:Search template helps you insert a 'search' link in wiki pages for searching this wiki, like this This template doesn't work

1. There is the 'google' compact uri syntax that allows you to insert links in your wiki pages for queries on google.com like this google:bananas See Namespaces for the full list of compact URI tools including c2find, cache, dejanews, dictionary and rfc.

Developers

• wp:OpenSearch is a standard for building search plugins, and exposing search services. It is how Firefox is able to hook up with wikipedia to offer suggestions as you type in the wikipedia search toolbar within Firefox. It is also how this site tells the browser that it offers a search toolbar plugin.

1. Visit this site http://freephile.com/wiki/
2. notice that the icon in the Firefox search toolbar turns bluish
3. click the little icon to reveal that there is a plugin available that will 'Add Freephile Wiki (En)'

Opensearch Implementation example

Opensearch is implemented in the MediaWiki system.

Viewing source on a page, you will see the following element:

<xml>
<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/wiki/opensearch_desc.php" title="{{SITENAME}} (English)" />
</xml>

That script (/wiki/opensearch_desc.php) generates xml output that the browser can interpret