Enabling ‘Search’ feature on Web Server (FrontPage 2002 on Windows 2003 Se

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Greetings, I apologize if this is a lame question, but we’re having difficulty enabling the Web Component that allows us to search through a web site. FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions have been enabled on the server and for the site. I presume that because the feedback feature now works that we were successful. However, we’re still getting an error when we try to search–the same error generated before we added and enabled server extensions. Is there an index feature we need to enable on the server? Or what?

My site was built using FrontPage 2002. The web server is a brand new installation of Windows 2003 Server with, of course, IIS 6.0.

Thanks!

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I didn’t know FP 2002 had a search feature. I just built one on my own. What error are you getting?

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Yes, FrontPage 2002 has both feedback and search features, but FrontPage Server Extensions must be available on the web server and configured in the web site properties. The search feature is available via Insert > Web Component… Also, it’s an option in many (perhaps all) of the web site templates. This latter method is how I managed to put it on my site.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t have all the error details at my disposal right now. Here’s the situation. I’m relatively new to FrontPage, but I’ve been a devotee of Woody’s for a while. Also, I’ve transcended my early expertise in Office to doing more geekly things such as MCSE-level training. Until a couple of weeks ago I was probably the only geek in the world that didn’t know how to put up even a simple web page. The center where I did my training has web hosting for students, so I decided to take advantage of it. Even though FrontPage Server Extensions are enabled, we couldn’t get them to work on their existing server. I think it was a server configuration issue.

They decided to let me build a replacement server using Windows 2003 Server. After enabling FrontPage Server Extensions, I initially received the same error as before, i.e.,

FrontPage Run-Time Component Page
You have submitted a form or followed a link to a page that requires a web server and the FrontPage Server Extensions to function properly.
This form or other FrontPage component will work correctly if you publish this web to a web server that has the FrontPage Server Extensions installed.
Click the arrow to return to the previous page.

I decided to enable Windows Indexing Service. This got me past the error above, but we received another one. I apologize for not knowing the details, but the URL on the error’s page has an extension, as I recall, of .idq. Someone in the office stated that this is supposed to be a page that generates automatically which was apparently, not being generated successfully.

So that’s where we are right now. I’m having difficulting finding useful information, even though I’ve scoured google and the MSKB. I’d appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks!

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Sorry I can’t help any more on this specific issue. I am assuming that the search feature uses the Indexing service to do it’s search. I just built my own search utility, pretty easy to do.

I do know quite a bit about IIS servers, I just have never used the particular component you are talking about.

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This may be the silly question, indeed a stupid one–but remember, I’m merely an aspiring geek. How does one build a search utility from scratch? I know a bit about the Windows command shell (what a powerful tool!) and *little* bit of vbs, but I’ve not written even one line of asp. Thanks for your help!

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That certainly isn’t a silly question. The search engine I built is definitely not a beginner’s application.

I’ll explain the process by walking through the logic.

First, what does a search engine do? It searches the text of your website, and returns links to pages that contain the text you are searching for, right? So, what’s the first thing you need to begin ‘searching’ your site? That would be a database filled with the text from every page. So, first, you build a database. Essentially the main table within my database has an ID field, a datestamp (so I know when the last time the page was updated), a URL field, and a text (memo) field, to hold the text of the page.

Now we need to fill that database. I built what is essentially a webcrawler in VB. I give it my site’s main page, and it crawls through the entire site (I have this running at work, not at home…http://www.marlow.com). It gathers just the text of the page (so it ignores pictures and HTML code). It then compares each page with the database. If the page exists, and is still the same, it doesn’t do anything. If it doesn’t exist it creates it, and if it has changed, it updates the data in the database. It also goes through and removes any pages in the database that it didn’t find on the crawl (dead pages). I actually converted a VB program I wrote that grabs pictures and movies from a website, for this project, it needed the same crawling, just ignored different things….

Finally, I wrote an ASP page that ‘searched’ the database. Actually, I wrote a VB .dll that searched the database, and then used ASP to interact with the .dll.

Does that answer your question? That search engine also let’s me make a page like this: http://www.marlow.com/whamopage.asp%5B/url%5D which is a page that contains all of the text on my site. Handy for search engines that only want one page of your site.

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Your process is very, very cool, and I’m quite impressed! As a SQL Server geek, I find this intellectually intriquing, but unfortunately I’d have to put it on my list of things to master in the medium term. For now, I merely want to configure my server to do the things it’s supposed to do! I appreciate your input, and thanks for sharing your insight.

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