The next version of the Sphider search tool is now in testing. Sphider 1.5.2 (and its companion PDO version, 1.5.2.1) is not very different from the previous version, except for a couple minor fixes on the Settings tab and the fact that the indexing portion has been toned down to issue warnings only when an improperly coded web page is encountered. Sphider 1.5.1 exits with a fatal error instead of continuing to index the site. While improper coding in a web page (commonly having to do with some off beat special character the database has no idea how to interpret) is rare, it sure was a monkey wrench when it came to indexing a web site. A couple other page conditions which could have produced a fatal exit now simply issue warnings (like the url exceeding the length the database could store).
At any rate, both the PDO and non-PDO varieties are now being tested to make sure the intended fixes work properly, and that we haven’t introduced any new problems. Expected arrival at this time is early December.
I’d like to thank you. A hundred times. Sincerely. A few weeks ago, we switched our site from http to https, and the ancient Orca search engine stopped working. Just as well, probably, but finding an open source alternative was much harder than I had thought. All I came up with was Sphider 1.3, and as you know better than anyone else, it’s outdated and riddled with bugs. I decided to try and fix the code, but soon found out it would take me hours, days and weeks before I’d be able to produce something functional and reliable. I was ready to give up on the whole thing, but on a hunch googled for “Sphider deprecated”. Lo and behold, on the second or third page your site showed up, with a download link to Sphider 1.5. I tried the PDO and the MySQLnd versions, and both of them work perfectly. Thanks, once again.
Rob
PS I think you should add your own credits to the code. It’s fine to show some loyalty to the original developer, but most of the code and all of the effort is yours now.
Thank you. Just so you know, there is a bug, recently discovered, in the PDO version. If you update the settings, descriptions disappear in the results listing! (The MySQLnd version does not have this anomaly.) The next version corrects this and will be released very soon, possibly within the next week.