The next releases for Sphider are just around the corner. There are two major changes in these releases.
The first change is the REMOVAL of the re-index restart ability. WHAT? WHY? Re-index restart was introduced because of an issue in which sometimes a re-index run gets interrupted. This was an attempt to be able to do another re-index, picking up where the last one stopped. The process worked — kind of — and not in all circumstances. The first issue was that the restart HAD to be the very next thing done, and certain steps HAD to be followed. So it wasn’t user friendly. Secondly, the restart HAD to be during the SAME session, a condition which was often not met and was totally out of the users control. The reason a re-index run stops is often because the session ended! In other words, IF the restart worked, it worked nicely. But when it didn’t worked, which was often, it left a bigger mess than the original incomplete index.
For those who feel the process was something they can’t live without, Sphider 4.0.2 and SphiderLite 2.0.2 will remain available for download upon special request until such time as I can add the instructions duplicate the restart functionality to the Sphider MODS board at https://www.forum.worldspaceflight.com/.
The second change has to do with sitemaps. Sphider has had the ability to index using a sitemap, but with a caveat — the sitemap had to be a simple sitemap.xml with a list of links to pages. Many larger sites have a sitemap.xml which consists of links to other sitemaps. Sphider 4.1.0 and SphiderLite 2.1.0 can handle this. One thing to be aware of is that with a larger site, it might take a very significant amount of time for Sphider to digest these maps! Sphider may appear frozen for awhile as it works in the background. Just watch in the browser tab for signs of activity.