Getting Started Question - Need Understanding - Help

[Frieda]

First, please forgive my ignorance - I am indeed the newbie of all newbies! I have the Professional Version.

There were 10 files generated. Eight with zdat extensions, 1 html, and 1 cgi. I know that the html file is for editing and designing the search page if desired, but was expecting a generated search box file. None of these files have it, when I tried using Javascript it did.

I don't see what is to be copied and entered on my index page. I have looked through the forum, faqs and read through the manual.

Aside fron the above:

I ignored this challenge and copied the code from the FAQs page, changing the Action to search.cgi. I inserted the ZOOM code before the form search on my page and did a test search (this is on my computer and not on a server). I get a message saying file may corrupt computer etc. which I ignored but then it says to choose a program to open.

I indexed offline as I do not want to do anything to the online site until I have everything working right.

That is enough for now. Once I get going I think it will go more smoothly. I just have no prior experience and that does handicap me some.

Frieda

[David]

There is no search box in the HTML file. This is normal.

The search box is, by default, generated by the 'script', search.cgi in this case.

I have looked through the forum, faqs and read through the manual

You must have missed it.

This is documented in the user guide. See section 3.3, "Files required" and section 5.5, "Where is my search page".

This is also documented in the FAQ, Why is there no search form on my search page?

And also documented here in the forms (many, many times). For example,
http://www.wrensoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=131

...did a test search (this is on my computer and not on a server).

The search scripts (PHP, CGI & ASP) are designed to run on a web server. You can't run them without a web server. And I assume you don't have a web server running on your local machine.

If you don't know what PHP, CGI & ASP are, refer to the user guide. See Appendix A, "What is PHP, ASP, CGI, or JavaScript?".

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David

[Frieda]

Ahhhhhhhh - that does bring understanding on how this works. I thought it would work like a Javascript but now I see the difference. I did read through all that information but just didn't understand that it had to be on the server. <shaking head>

So now I see that the indexing can be done on the local computer BUT then the files have to be uploaded before it works. That was what I really needed to know and was missing.

I have the form like I want it on my index page now. I am anxious to upload to see how it goes.

Many thanks for this information, David.

Frieda