Search in specific directory ONLY?
 

Below in this forum is a good thread (and solution) on doing sub-directory specific searches. I have a slightly different problem. I have an an index of a site:

http://myintranet/

There's a protected area,

http://myintranet/subdirectory/

I need to have a search tool for the main intranet that indexes everything - EXCEPT the subdirectory (it's important that stuff stay away from prying eyes).

At the same time, I want to have a search for the subdirectory that searches ONLY that subdirectory.

I can see how to do the latter, but not the former. Any suggestions? Many thanks in advance.

Michael Fuchs

Hello,

The solution is in this thread.

Laurent

Thanks very much. That's actually the thread to which I was referring. However, unless I'm mistaken, it only describes how to limit a search to a given directory; not how to exclude a directory from a given search. To rephrase my problem:

I need the main search engine to return results from everything under:

http://myintranet/

EXCEPT for materials in

http://myintranet/restricted/

At the same time, I do need to do what that thread describes - which is have a separate search for ONLY

http://myintranet/restricted/

That means that those materials have to be in the index. So how do I keep them out of searches for the primary search of the main site? The problem seems to be that phpdig bases it's notion of what's a "site" or "index" based on hostname. I essentially need two separate and exclusive sites, or indexes, for two areas that happent to be on the same host. Any workaround ideas? Many thanks again.

Michael

Hi. If PhpDig has already crawled myintranet/restricted you can delete the restricted directory from the admin panel and then use a robots.txt file. You can also delete and exclude the restricted directory from the admin panel and forego the robots.txt file. To delete and/or exclude the directory, go to the admin panel, click the site, click the update button, and then click a red X or red circle symbol.

Thanks very much. But then how do I provide a search function for that directory (if it's been excluded from the index)? I will recap again. 8^)

One search for everything in

http://myintranet/ - EXCEPT http://myintranet/restricted/

Another search for

http://myintranet/restricted/ ONLY.

I understand how to do either (instructions for each have been thoughtfully provided ;^). But I don't see any way to do both at once - in order to keep the restricted area out of the main search, I have to delete or restrict it, which means there's no way to search it separately (that I can see).

Many thanks again. - Michael

Hi. If you want two separate searches, then you'd need to install PhpDig twice, once for http://myintranet/ and then again for http://myintranet/restricted/ as there is no way to currently allow the options you seek. Alternatively, you could protect http://myintranet/restricted/ with a .htaccess file and crawl, so if users click a restricted page, they are asked to login, but this will not prevent the results from showing in a search.

That's what I was afraid of, thanks for clearing it up.

Perhaps I'll take this to the mod_requests forum . . .

Cheers.