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A Sphider-Plus Review December 24, 2009 07:26PM |
I used the December release of Sphider to build [search.americanantigravity.com] - and I found a free download of Sphider-Plus to build [find.americanantigravity.com] ... check those out. I've done a fair amount of customization on the original Sphider site, but Sphider-Plus (version 2.0) is boilerplate...
First off, spending $120 bucks for the Sphider-Plus script (which I didn't) isn't a big deal, but I wanted to make sure that it met my needs. That's especially true after spending so much time customizing the original Sphider script, and then facing the same challenge once again simply to gain the extra enhancements. Also, Sphider's been around for a while, so I can rest easy knowing that I can apply upgrades as they're released with minimal customization. Since Sphider-Plus is a one-off, I feel more nervous that it puts me into a custom upgrade path that may or may not be supported in the future.
The Benefits: Sphider-Plus has some really incredible features that addressed some basic deficiencies in the original Sphider. The biggest gain from Tec's diligent work is indexing of media files, which I personally find useful. Another BIG plus that he doesn't advertise enough is that the script will archive & store image files relating to each page it crawls - it gives you a mini "media library" for each topic, which is VERY cool. Also, indexing for RSS & the alternative PDF converter is nice, although in my case I have a pdfconverter on my host that works with the original Sphider.
Another BIG benefit is that Sphider-Plus doesn't time-out during indexing operations - I saw a php.ini file included in the plus zipfile, so I think there are some timeout adjustments, but in addition to that the crawl results have been added to a separate page, presumably so you can continue using the admin tool while it indexes (which I don't, because I'm paranoid about corrupting my D
.
The Drawbacks: Sphider-Plus needs a lot of refinement to truly reach its potential. The BIGGEST disappointment is the user-interface - Tec's broken the CSS layout used in Sphider, and apparently hard-coded a ton of tables into Sphider Plus. Also, this hard-coding makes it difficult to easily change the site's template, meaning that you're going to be hunting down style issues for a while if you customize it. What needs to happen in some future upgrade is for Tec to move all the style elements outside of the actual php script to allow easy customization of this script. As for the tables - they don't bother me a lot, but I did note that the "Advanced Search" seems to be the default search view with this script, which is overkill for most people's applications.
Overall, I like Sphider Plus but I'm probably not going to use it, at least for a while, because customizing it is going to be a rather extensive project that could take much longer than the original script. However, for anybody interested in investing the time in that customization, you're going to get a lot more features than the original script offers.
Quick Note: One weak area for BOTH Sphider and Plus is the categories function. This functionality actually seems to be a port from the old PHPHoo scripts, which are what I used to learn PHP back in 1998. Back in '98, these categories were a great idea because a lot of people used them to drill-down to specific topics in Yahoo!, but these days the function seems rather antiquated. In today's world, the notion of categorizing a site just doesn't seem granular enough - I'd much rather see an automated category feature based on page-content or type of data (PDF, multimedia, image, etc).
Speaking of today's world, one thing that I LOVE about Sphider-plus is that it blurs the line between "search engine" and "Content Management System". For me, that's long overdue, since most CMS platforms have features to add external link descriptions manually, but none seem to have really taken focus on spidering those. Also, from a "content management" perspective, search-engines can offer a great example to CMS platforms, but that's a story for another day...
Tim Ventura
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2009 07:29PM by timventura.
First off, spending $120 bucks for the Sphider-Plus script (which I didn't) isn't a big deal, but I wanted to make sure that it met my needs. That's especially true after spending so much time customizing the original Sphider script, and then facing the same challenge once again simply to gain the extra enhancements. Also, Sphider's been around for a while, so I can rest easy knowing that I can apply upgrades as they're released with minimal customization. Since Sphider-Plus is a one-off, I feel more nervous that it puts me into a custom upgrade path that may or may not be supported in the future.
The Benefits: Sphider-Plus has some really incredible features that addressed some basic deficiencies in the original Sphider. The biggest gain from Tec's diligent work is indexing of media files, which I personally find useful. Another BIG plus that he doesn't advertise enough is that the script will archive & store image files relating to each page it crawls - it gives you a mini "media library" for each topic, which is VERY cool. Also, indexing for RSS & the alternative PDF converter is nice, although in my case I have a pdfconverter on my host that works with the original Sphider.
Another BIG benefit is that Sphider-Plus doesn't time-out during indexing operations - I saw a php.ini file included in the plus zipfile, so I think there are some timeout adjustments, but in addition to that the crawl results have been added to a separate page, presumably so you can continue using the admin tool while it indexes (which I don't, because I'm paranoid about corrupting my D
.
The Drawbacks: Sphider-Plus needs a lot of refinement to truly reach its potential. The BIGGEST disappointment is the user-interface - Tec's broken the CSS layout used in Sphider, and apparently hard-coded a ton of tables into Sphider Plus. Also, this hard-coding makes it difficult to easily change the site's template, meaning that you're going to be hunting down style issues for a while if you customize it. What needs to happen in some future upgrade is for Tec to move all the style elements outside of the actual php script to allow easy customization of this script. As for the tables - they don't bother me a lot, but I did note that the "Advanced Search" seems to be the default search view with this script, which is overkill for most people's applications.
Overall, I like Sphider Plus but I'm probably not going to use it, at least for a while, because customizing it is going to be a rather extensive project that could take much longer than the original script. However, for anybody interested in investing the time in that customization, you're going to get a lot more features than the original script offers.
Quick Note: One weak area for BOTH Sphider and Plus is the categories function. This functionality actually seems to be a port from the old PHPHoo scripts, which are what I used to learn PHP back in 1998. Back in '98, these categories were a great idea because a lot of people used them to drill-down to specific topics in Yahoo!, but these days the function seems rather antiquated. In today's world, the notion of categorizing a site just doesn't seem granular enough - I'd much rather see an automated category feature based on page-content or type of data (PDF, multimedia, image, etc).
Speaking of today's world, one thing that I LOVE about Sphider-plus is that it blurs the line between "search engine" and "Content Management System". For me, that's long overdue, since most CMS platforms have features to add external link descriptions manually, but none seem to have really taken focus on spidering those. Also, from a "content management" perspective, search-engines can offer a great example to CMS platforms, but that's a story for another day...
Tim Ventura
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2009 07:29PM by timventura.
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