I need to change something and it looks like I have to edit a CGI file. How do I do this? Can anyone give me a tip?

Also, someone (I think it was Geo?) mentioned something about a search utility we could use for the site. I'd like to implement one that A) doesn't involve us having to link to a third-party site to use a utility, B) is easy to implement, and C) is free.

I'm not asking for much, am I? :)

Anyway, any ideas are welcome. I'd like to be able to allow people to be able to search for old news items. I realize now that it's pointless to archive the news by date, because who is ever going to go "Hmmm...I wonder what the news was on February 4, 2001?" It's more likely that someone will want to search on "Diablo 2" or something like that.

You can use Google to search one site for content. I am using Google's toolbar in my browser to allow me to do it but you can do it manually as well by doing this:

site:quartertothree.com kohan

If you could just figure out how to send the "site:quartertothree.com" part ahead of all searchs, bingo, easy search engine. Google doesn't pick up the message boards though so if you want to search them you will have to devise something else.

BTW, the Google toolbar rocks. It adds search capability to any site, obviously does standard searchs, and has a lot of other neat features.

I know this isn't the best solution but it is something. :)

-- Xaroc

I might be able to mutilate the CGI for you. What do you need to change? If it's something that appears on the page, it's probably in the file as HTML crammed into a variable - so I could spot it pretty easily.

Mark, I think there must be a search engine included in some version of Discus--either that or Jaded over at jadedspub.com implemented his own (he's got a "board_search.cgi" script in his Discus directory, and it works really nicely).

Well, Jaded does this kind of thing for a living. Tom and I use Dreamweaver to write the HTML code, so that's the level of expertise we're at. Maybe I'll email Jaded. Is he still in the middle of that huge work project he mentioned a while ago?

Jim, all I want changed is my email address that pops up when someone tries to access the board registration stuff without a password. It's pointing to an invalid address now.

Free Find and Atomz Express Search were the free Web site search engines I recommended.

I use Free Find on a couple of my fan sites, but I've heard good things about Atomz Express and the latter is truly ad-free (Free Find puts an ad or two on results pages). Atomz is limited to sites 500 pages or less, so I assume Quarter to Three is under that but maybe the archives are huge? OTOH, nice thing about Free Find is that you can sked it to re-spider your site on a regular basis which is handy if you are constantly adding and changing things.

With most things like this you just need to sign up and put a snippet of javascript on the page wherever you want the engine.

I don't know if you guys use a news script here though. If you do, the search things I'm mentioning may not work with the archives for that (unless you want to manually add all those archive pages). Most cgi news scripts have some sort of search option separately.

Atomz has an option to automatically rebuild your index once a week on a day/time you choose (basically spidering the pages you've listed to look for new things as with Free Find) too, thought I'd add.

Lastly you can check out my old Darkstone site to see how Freefind works.

The search box is in the far right column, lower side. Try typing in "hotkeys" or "auto-click", for example. :)

Google offers site-specific search as a free service. I'm not sure if the search query links to Google itself, but we use it at the site I help edit (www.williamgaddis.org) and the person who does our HTML has had nothing but great things to say about its functionality.

http://www.google.com/services/

-Ron

"Is he still in the middle of that huge work project he mentioned a while ago? "

I think that's let up--he's posting again more often. I'm not sure if he wrote the script or not--could be. It's a pretty nice script, though--I've used it a couple of times recently and it's quite fast.

Ron, Geo, and Scott, thanks for the suggestions. I went with the Google thing Ron suggested. It seems to work great, was free, and was something that a bonehead like me could install in 5 minutes. I'm really excited about it. It's at the bottom of the front page. I'm not sure if we'll keep it there or not. Thanks again!

Curses, I'm foiled again! :) I love Google and don't use any other search engines anymore usually, FWIW.

Heh -- yeah, when Ron mentioned that Google had something free, I was all ears. I love google too and rarely use any other search engine.

Mark-- speaking of changing your address.

The mailto link on the front page is pointing to an invalid address. I know this because I tried it twice in the past two weeks.

You should fix it when you get a chance, so if I see some cool news thing at work, I can pass it on.

"Curses, I'm foiled again! :)"

And he'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling teenagers and your stupid dog!

"The mailto link on the front page is pointing to an invalid address."

Fixed it. That was all on me. I entered the wrong address when i recently updated it.