how to have search engine without ads in Dreamweaver

[Tony Whitehall]

How can I have search engine without ads in Dreamweaver?

I've installed and have been using Adobe's search engine, and it was working well.

But at some point, it began showing ads in search results that are irrelevant to my Web site, and those irrelevant ads appear before the search results that relate to my Web site.  And I noticed that at least one user searching my site was confused by seeing those irrelevant ads appearing in her search of my site, and she immediately gave up on searching my site, saying the search moter didn't work.

Also, I now have the problem that at some point, some words that appear on my Web site don't appear when I type them in the Google search motor window in my Web site.

It may be because I stopped indexing my site using Site Automator.  I think that was because Site Automator started charging for its site indexing service.

So my sitution is messy, and I fear this be one of those nightmarish technical problems that takes a major amount of difficult work and time to resolve.

I'm using Dreamweaver 2020.

Thanks.

Tony

[Tony Whitehall]

Thank you Birnou.

I think you understand my naming standard.  I've included in every HTML page that contains my art image the name of the art image (but with hyphens among all the words in the titles).  I've also put all the names of all of my JPEG art images in my image titles, again including hyphens between all the words in the titles.

Do you mean that for Apache compatibility, I should use only lower-case letters for my names of pages?  I started using upper- and lowercase page titles, but I'm worried that might have been a mistake.

How can I "set up a parser written in PHP that will browse my server, looking for all the images in my own tree"?  I have no idea how to do that, because I'm just a struggling artist (and struggling, involuntary, lower-tier Web developer by necessity).  

Tony

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Birnou.

You wrote, "if for example your image is named image-foo, your image file will be named using the postfix -wtaermark as image-foo-watermark.jpg and the HTML file will use the prefix print- as print-image-foo.html.
Is this correct?"

I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I'll explain how I name my files  Example:  for my art image called "Arbutus and Pacific" I've named the corresponding HTML file "arbutus-and-aacific.html, and the corresponding JPEG image file I've named "arbutus-and-pacific.jpg".  

I use this naming standard throughout my Web site.

Tony

[B i r n o u]

sorry, I have to go to bed, tomorrow early in the morning I still have a long day with a lot of driving to do.
can i resume our exchange later ?

[B i r n o u]

so , what is your tree structure... I mean do you have :

• a folder containing folders of images grouped by theme ?...
• do you have HTML and JPG in the same folder?
• do you have JPG images only, or also PNG ?

from there we could then create a parser that will parse all those folders and nested folder

read all the content, and distinguish file type... depending on the file type a simple PHP container will list all the images to be recorded.

but... a crucial question, is ... how frequently to you add new images ?

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Birnou.

I add images to my site every several days, on average.

Do you have: 

•  a folder containing folders of images grouped by theme?  No.

• do you have HTML and JPG in the same folder?  No.

• do you have JPG images only, or also PNG?  Only JPG.

Tony

[B i r n o u]

Sorry for the delay, the activity here at the studio and the travel is quite sustained.

so we'll say that you have two complexities to solve. on the one hand the problem of the search engine itself and on the other hand the structure of your pages which use a FRAMESET

although as Jon points out earlier in the thread, the two problems are closely related, let's take things in order.

First, let's look at the search engine and analyze your answers to the three questions:

1. you don't use a sub-tree... so all the themes are in the same folder?... so do you really have a single folder containing all themes
2. images and HTML files are separated... so you have at least two folders one for HTML and one for images...
3. finally the images are only JPG... do you confirm that you have, for the same image, two representations : the first one using the thumbnail keyword and the second one using watermark ? is it really that ?

finally the problem is that you continue to add images every several days... in that cas, you will need to set up two mechanisms... a first one which will parse your whole structure, in order to store everything in database... the second one would consist in taking into account any new addition or modification

parsing and storing is not a big deal... it's a simple PHP file that will crawl the storage....

concerning the second mechanism, two approach could be considered... a first one that open a form like UI adminustrator, to complete and modify the database content... or having a new parser that would only sniff files with new modification dates and parse them in turn... let's say that this second method could be implemented by a daily CRON.

then it would only be a matter of a SQL query to bring out the user searches... today this kind of search even complex is not without solution 😉

Second, how to avoid the FRAMESET without having to rebuild the site from scratch ?

two major problems arise, the first good one is the use of FRAMEs, and the second is that all the pages that are then loaded into these FRAMEs are all based on a TABLE layout. And this is also problematic, especially for mobile device distribution and for the indexing of your content (independently from your home search engine)... although we could give your database to be indexed by generic engines... but that's another topic.

anyway, the main question, is... how many pages (MAIN FRAMESET) do you have in your all web site ?

if you don't know, just launch a search from in withinf Dreamweaver (Ctrl Shift F)... and search for the string <frameset

you will get in the results panel the number of files found

so depending on the amount of file, but most on the structure thay have (if they have the same one) we could probably use a search and replace, replacing the frame set by an include placing content (FRAME CONTENT) in new DIV box. Then remove the complete NOFRAME tag. Sure we will need a PHP parser to correct here and there some artefact and file extension.

luckily it seems that your left FRAME is a static and recurring menu in each page... so it should be able to be removed and injected in each page by an include.

again the amount of file will help us to consider the amount of work if we have to manually rebuild everything from scratch.

Some times agao, I had to use the same approach on a large volume old static HTML internal network, and in a couple of weeks we was able to make it run again in a fresh brand new aspect.

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks so much, Birnou, for all your help.

I made a dramatic and adventurous leap yesterday (Friday, May 7) by trying the monthly paid version of Freefind search motor, for 19 U. S. $ per month, which a kind volunteer advisor in this group recommended.

The results are generally very good – and much better than the really bad quality free Google Custom Search.

The paid version of Freefind seems to have indexed all of my pages (except for 36 pages which I accidentally included em dashes instead of en dashes in the titles of, but because Freefind provides a log of the indexing process, Freefind flagged for me those 36 improperly titled files, so I've begun the process of changing those em dashes to en dashe, using Dreamweaver, and I'll periodically re-index my site from the Freefind Web site as I slowly and painstakingly retitle those HTML files from the Freefind sites, by replacing the page titles' em dashes with en dashes.

I discovered by using Freefind that Freefind gives me detailed reports on what words and phrases users search for on my Web site.  So I can monitor people use of my new Freefind search motor on my Web site.  So if there's not much use of the search motor, I plan to cancel my Freefind subscription and forget about having a search motor on my Web site.  But if I find that my customers use the search motor much, I'll continue to subsribe to Freefind.

Freefind can even handle frames and framesets, and there's a section of the Freefind Web site that explains this, although it's quite technical, so I might find it too much of a struggle to figure that out.  At the moment, Freefind shows the my right (main content) frames of my individual image pages, as well as shows the (I think) four framesets for my main sections of my site, so that's good enough for now and maybe forever.

Unfortunately, Freefind does't show thumbnails of my images in its search results, whereas Google Custom Search does, but the search results of Google Custom Search were woefully incomplete because Google Custom Search didn't index my site thoroughly, so my paid Freefind (that's an oxymoron!) search motor is vastly better than the free Google Custom Search.

I struggle tremdously to figure out very technical issues, such as the mysterious "SQL" and "Cron" (which I've never even heard of, and which you alluded to above, Birnou) so trying to troubleshoot this issue by customizing my own search motor here with your generous advice could take me weeks to tackle, and in the end I still might not be able to figure it out properly, as I'm just a mid-level computer and tech expert – not a top-flight tech expert like you technical brainiac advisors are.

Thank you, brainiacs here, and to you, especially, Birnou, for taking so much time and effort to help me to solve this very technical and complicated issue that has been plaguing me for years. 

Tony 

[B i r n o u]

Hello Tony,

thank you for your feedback, and sorry if i used some barbaric terms. it's true that i didn't pay attention, nor did i ask myself if you were familiar with this kind of jargon.

in fact it's not very complicated,

SQL is a language that allows to communicate and query some kind of databases, including MySQL (now MariaDB), PostGreSQL and many others.... but not all

this language is used in the form of queries that are sent to the database. (INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT... for the most common... but not only) and the database react in consequences

CRON is in fact a mechanism specific to the UNIX operating system (CRON JOB) which allows to send commands (in SHELL language) at given periods of time... so it is easy to invoke scripts, in a recurrent way, which will carry out some tasks for us.

Anyway, it's great that you could find a solution to your problems. And you know that there are solutions, out there,  that can eventually take over if you were to change your approach

Take good care and thanks again for your feedback.

have a pleasant day

Birnou

[Tony Whitehall]

Thanks, Birnou.

You wrote, 

---

@B i r n o u wrote:

Hello Tony,

thank you for your feedback, and sorry if i used some barbaric terms. it's true that i didn't pay attention, nor did i ask myself if you were familiar with this kind of jargon.

in fact it's not very complicated,

SQL is a language that allows to communicate and query some kind of databases, including MySQL (now MariaDB), PostGreSQL and many others.... but not all

this language is used in the form of queries that are sent to the database. (INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, SELECT... for the most common... but not only) and the database react in consequences

CRON is in fact a mechanism specific to the UNIX operating system (CRON JOB) which allows to send commands (in SHELL language) at given periods of time... so it is easy to invoke scripts, in a recurrent way, which will carry out some tasks for us...

---

In fact, for me, it IS very complicated.

That's why I'm a fine artist and you're a professional Web developer.

If I were innately good at Web development, I, too would be a professional Web developer and perhaps volunteer advisor, and I'd be making a lot more money than I am as an artist.  

Instead, I'm innately BAD at Web development and I want to avoid it as much as possible.  It took me years to learn how to develop and design and complie my Web site, because it's extremely difficult and complicated, and the technology keep on changing, too.

I've been told countless times by Web developers how easy Web development is.  

I couldn't ever find Web development easy, even If my life depended on it, because my brain is not 'wired' the same at the brains of technical people such as Web developers, and Web developers apparently are not 'wired' to understand this, because they keep on implying that my lack of Web development skill is something I can simply and easily overcome just a bit of effort. 

No one can accel at everything they try in life, as far as I'm aware.   

Tony

[B i r n o u]

in fact, when i said that it was not very complicated, i was not talking about how to put into practice the methodology that i presented. i was simply talking about understanding the terms and acronyms that i used.

That's why I explained their meaning. I hope at least that it helped you to decipher this jargon and understand what I was saying... 😉

you can't imagine how much i understand you. at the beginning i fell in the development when the web didn't exist yet. my work at the time consisted in filming scenes of tribal lives, of visual anthropology, but the flat and linear aspect of the video editing resulting from several weeks, or even months, of work made me feel sorry... i needed interactivity, and it's there that i discovered hypercard, but above all Director and lingo. it was paradoxically, and against all expectations, an exciting discovery.