Alternate site for log files

[JW]

Regarding: http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/logging.html

If a host site will not allow a folder's permissions to be set to write mode (755 or 777), then would it be possible to have the log itself updated on a completely different server that does allow write access?

Otherwise (and what may be a better solution), could the entire search engine itself be located on a different host (that does allow write permissions), and yet still be used seamlessly on the first site?

Are there other issues that we would need to consider if we were hosting the search engine separately from the content being indexed?

Thanks,

- JW

[David]

The 1st option is only possible if the two machines in question are networked and have shared hard drives. (an unlikely situation if you are using 3rd party hosting)

The 2nd option is possible. But the domain name in the URL would change. e.g. if your site was
www.mysite.com
then your seaarch engine might be at
www.mysitesearch.com

As an example, you can see a remote search here. We indexed 51,000 pages from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. But have the search function on our own domain.
http://www.wrensoft.com/cgi-bin/wikipedia/search.cgi

---
David

[JW]

Excellent, that is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you very much. We will probably need to end up using the second option for our scenario.

Now, would it still be possible to embed a small search form on a page in mysite.com, even if the engine is on mysitesearch.com?

In your manual, it gives the following examples:

<form method="GET" action="search.php">
<input type="text" name="zoom_query" size="10">
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>

...and...

Alternatively, you can use an absolute path to the search script (so that no matter where you place
the above HTML, it will still find the file), for example:

<form method="GET" action="http&#58;//www.mysite.com/search.php">
...
</form>

So, in other words... would this code work if it was in a page on mysite.com?

<form method="GET" action="http&#58;//www.mysitesearch.com/search.php">
...
</form>

(I just don't know if you can send information from a form to a 3rd party website.)

Thanks,

- JW

[Ray]

Yes, that should work fine.

The only way form data from external sites could be blocked is if you have special scripting or server configuration on your second site to do this. This would only be a potential issue if you are sending it to an unsolicited site. But if you manage both sites yourself, it should be no problem.