Web Project Progress Report

It has been a case of being too busy with web publishing projects to actually post to this premier woffling blog. Who'd have thought I'd miss a chance to woffle on?

Anyway, here I am. Let the woffle begin!

The main project that has me tied up is Healthy Vitamin Choice. There seems to be so much to do. Even simple tasks like finding, evaluating and implementing a site search facility takes time.

There are plenty of options available, but only a few that are actually any good (IMHO). Some are pretty commercial, as in thinly covered excuses for advertising. Others don't actually search the site content beyond file names and meta-tags. They aren't much use really, because meta tags never really represent all the content on a page. (Well, unless it's one of those cheap and nasty program generated "keyword rich" pages, but they stink really).

No, when it comes to searching all the content on a genuinely content-rich site, the worthwhile tools thin out significantly. Unless, of course, you are happy to pay exhorbitant rates each month (for very little) or invest a large sum in overpriced software.

In the end I went with PerlFect. It searches all the content, is fast, highly configurable, completely advertising free and, is actually free itself. I found it easy to install using the supplied installation script. Pretty good stuff actually. There's just one little bug to sort out and I'm currently working on that.

For instance, if you search for "vitamin" you get a ton of hits. If you search for "vitamin B" you get the same hits, not just the B related ones. I'm looking into this, so It's back to work for me...