Using Zoom with Virtual Mechanics SiteSpinner

Zoom can be used to add a search engine to your SiteSpinner website with ease.

While you can integrate Zoom in a number of different way with your website, the following provides some common scenarios that should help you get a working search page on your SiteSpinner-created website as quickly as possible.

Note: This tutorial assumes that you already have a working website created with SiteSpinner, and hosted online (either via iHostsVM or your own choice of web host). Zoom can also be used to index a website which is only published to disk, please refer to "Offline Mode" in the Users Guide.

  1. First, we will need to create a new web page for the search page.

    Load up your project file in SiteSpinner, and create a new page as you normally would - copying or cloning the layout elements as required. You should name this page "search_template".

    Click on the "Enter Code Text" button to create a code block. We will use this to specify where the search form and search results will appear on the page. In this block, enter the following:

    <!--ZOOMSEARCH-->

    Note that the above text must appear as is (no spaces between the dashes and the word, etc.). Move and resize this text block to suit your page layout. Change the heading to the page to something suitable (eg. "Search this site"), and save your changes. You now have a search template that will define the look of your search page.



  2. Publish your site online, so that the new file is uploaded to your website. It does not need to be linked to at this point.

  3. Once you have done this, you are ready to index your website with Zoom. Start up Zoom Indexer, ensure that you have "Spider mode" selected and enter the URL address to your online site (eg. "http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html") in the "Start spider from this URL" text box. For the "Output directory", you can leave this with the default, or you can change this to a different folder where you would prefer the search engine index files will be created prior to uploading.

    Next, you should select the "Platform" for your search engine. This depends on the scripting capabilities provided by your web host. If you are hosted with iHostVM, we would recommend selecting "PHP". If you are not sure what your web server supports, contact your web host for details. You can find out more about each script platform here. We would recommend PHP or ASP where possible.

  4. Now click on "Configure" and select the "FTP" tab. Check the option for "Do not upload search template". This is necessary because we have already created one with SiteSpinner and uploaded it before, and we do not want Zoom to upload a new one which would overwrite it. You can also enter in your FTP details at this step. Copy over your FTP information from SiteSpinner ("Publish" -> "Publish Project" -> "FTP").



    When you are done, click "OK". Then click "File"->"Save configuration" so that Zoom will remember your settings next time.

  5. You are now ready to begin indexing your website. Click on "Start Indexing". The log window on the right will show what Zoom is doing, as it scans each page of your website, crawling the links and indexing the information it finds.

  6. When indexing has finished, click OK and allow it to upload the search files. Once this is completed, you should now have a working search page on your web site! You can access it by opening a browser window and entering the URL to your website with "search.php" as the filename (this assumes you are using the PHP script platform. If you are using ASP, the filename will be "search.asp").

  7. You should now see your new search page, with the layout you created in SiteSpinner, and a search form where you specified. Enter in a search word, and try it out!



  8. Once you have confirmed that everything is working fine, you should add a link to the search page, on the menus of your site, so that your visitors will be able to find the search function easily. Open up your site project in SiteSpinner again, and add a link on your navigation menus to "search.php" (or "search.asp", etc.)

  9. You can further customize the appearance of the search results (colours, fonts, etc.) on the search page. Take a look at this page on how to customize the search page with CSS.

Problems?

Consult our extensive support section and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and see if there is an answer there. You can also visit our users discussion forum and trade tips or advice.

More comprehensive information about using and configuring the Zoom Indexer can be found in the Users Guide (PDF file) which is available for download.

More about Zoom Search Engine.