Entropy Search ???

[Arubalisa]

I just set up the Entropy Search on one of my pages to test. Is there a way to have the search open in the same window rather opening a new one?

Anyone have any experience with Entropy Search and any effect, if any, on their Google rankings?

I have a directory with photos of my daughter for family and friends. How, if possible, can I exclude a directory from being displayed in the search results? Or do I just let the pages be indexed and then create a password for the directory?

Thanks in advance.

[2notch]

I have a directory with photos of my daughter for family and friends. How, if possible, can I exclude a directory from being displayed in the search results? Or do I just let the pages be indexed and then create a password for the directory?

Thanks in advance.

Use the robots.txt file in public_html. Add the lines:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder/
This will keep the spiders from reading anything in /folder/.
That still doesn't keep snoopers out. Password protect that folder with .htaccess .

[Hummdis]

The robots.txt file works for sites like Google, but this doesn't stop the entropy search from indexing it. I've got my robots.txt file setup as you've stated below and Google, MSN, Yahoo, and the others don't see those directories, however, they still show up on the entropy search. :(

How can folders be excluded from the entropy search function?

Thanks! :)

[tomgoetz]

Entropy Search was problematic for me, too. It included results from add-on domains and doesn't abide by robots.txt rules. Pasting the code below into your page will give you a google search box. Replace all the bluehost.com occurrences with your domain name and you are set. You can futz with it to change it's appearance, and delete TARGET=top if you don't want a separate window. This may be a solution for some people.


<!-- Search Google -->
<center>
<FORM method=GET action=http://www.google.com/custom TARGET=top>
<TABLE bgcolor=#FFFFFF cellspacing=0 border=0>
<tr valign=top><td>
<A HREF=http://www.google.com/search>
<IMG SRC=http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_25wht.gif border=0 ALT=Google align=middle></A>
</td>
<td>
<INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=31 maxlength=255 value="">
<INPUT type=submit name=sa VALUE="Search">
<INPUT type=hidden name=cof

VALUE="T:black;ALC:red;LC:blue;AH:center;VLC:purple;GL:0; S:http://bluehost.com;AWFID:d75114acbd5748ba;">
<font face=arial,sans-serif size=-1><input type=hidden name=domains value="bluehost.com"><br><input type=radio

name=sitesearch value=""> Search WWW <input type=radio name=sitesearch value="bluehost.com" checked> Search bluehost.com

</font><br>
</td></tr></TABLE>
</FORM>
</center>
<!-- Search Google -->

[tomgoetz]

In the code I just posted, it replaced 2 characters with a smiley. It should be ": p" where the smiley is. Remove the quotes, and delete the space between the characters- I had to put it there so I wouldn't get another smiley. Stupid smilies.

[Arubalisa]

Thanks I ended up going with the google search instead as Tom suggested.

[tomgoetz]

I'm happy it works for you. I get a lot of tips from this forum, so I'm glad I could contribute something myself. I'd still like to see the entropy search improved so that I could include only the folders of my choosing, and I'm sure it will happen eventually, but the Google route was the best way for me for now. I'll be checking back here for new ideas!

[AD2]

I just set up the Entropy Search on one of my pages to test. Is there a way to have the search open in the same window rather opening a new one?


You can disable the creation of a new page by changing:

<form action="/cgi-sys/entropysearch.cgi" target=searchwindow>

to:

<form action="/cgi-sys/entropysearch.cgi">

It is the target that is causing the new page to be displayed. The example code given by BlueHost implies other features as well, but I cannot get them to work. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="template" value="default">

Lo and behold, there is a file default in the directory .htmltemplates in your root directory (/.htmltemplates/default). When you edit this file in the control panel, this where the template data is stored. Ironically, if upload a file directly to .htmltemplates, the file is NOT used. Why? Can't say except to guess that some sort of initialization occurs in the control panel. In addition, adding a new template to the directory (say /.htmltemplates/search_results) and updating the hidden value, has no affect. Sort of a bummer.

I haven't explored what changing:

<input type="hidden" name="basehref" value="http://yourdomain.com">

will do, but my gut says you could probably add path information to the end to limit the search to a specific directory. Experience with template field makes me wonder if the change would have any affect.

[lporrel]

Does anyone know where entropysearch puts its autogenerated index? Is there anyway to tweak it manually?

[Trout hunter]

If you are looking to edit the results page template, when you go to the Entropy search "Setup Search Engine" and there will be a link "Edit Search Results Template" to the raw html code that you can tweak and peak to meet your needs.

Its been awhile since I did it, but I found the following code at a different site and looks to be the same as what I did on my site.
my site is nolimitsministries.net

<html>

<title>Default Template</title>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

<!--- Don't modify the cgi tag --->

<cgi>

<!--- Don't modify the cgi tag --->

</body

</html>

[joe124c41]

You can customize the default template in .htmltemplates
Step 1) change your form to
<input type="hidden" name="template" value="example.html">

Step 2) Up the "example.html" to the .htmltemplates directory one folder up from public_html.

Still searching for a way to control the returned results (currently showing add-on domain files).

[joe124c41]

Found out through experimentation you can use external CSS (style sheet) commands like so:


a.{font-size:13px;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
a:link{font-size:13px;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
a:visited{font-size:13px;color:#666;text-decoration:none;}
a:active{font-size:13px;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
a:hover{font-size:13px;color:#CC0000;text-decoration:none;}

This however will fail to load in the CGI results:


.nav{font-size:13px;text-decoration:none;}
a.nav{font-size:13px;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
a.nav:link{font-size:13px;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
a.nav:visited{font-size:13px;color:#666;text-decoration:none;}
a.nav:active{font-size:13px;color:#000;text-decoration:none;}
a.nav:hover{font-size:13px;color:#CC0000;text-decoration:none;}

Still can't find a way to remove add-on domains from showing up in the search other than making them password protected, removing them or editing the robot.txt. Which is not ok in my preferred results.:o

[dovemaster]

You can customize the default template in .htmltemplates
Step 1) change your form to
<input type="hidden" name="template" value="example.html">

Step 2) Up the "example.html" to the http://bodybuilderspro.info/customimages/4/1240197088/random.gif.htmltemplates directory one folder up from public_html.

Still searching for a way to control the returned results (currently showing add-on domain files).

These are pretty good pointers. I haven't had to worry about this, but for the future your experiments are quite handy :)

[shaniqua]

Hi. Just read your posting regarding Entropy Search problems. I'm wondering if you or someone else reading this knows of any good resources for using Entropy. Specifically, my problem is that Entropy doesn't seem to be indexing all the html files (some just don't show up when they should). But in general, it would be nice to have a good faq or something for using this utility.

thanks to anyone who can help, or at least try :-)

[RebeccaMI]

A client and I are having problems with Entropy search, so after browsing this post I decided to try the Google search Tom suggested instead of the Entropy search. I replaced the instances of bluehost.com with the client's domain name as suggested in Tom's post. However, when I try the search I don't get any results, even for words or names that I know are on the site. Anybody have any ideas how I can fix that?



<!-- Search Google -->
<center>
<FORM method=GET action=http://www.google.com/custom TARGET=top>
<TABLE bgcolor=#FFFFFF cellspacing=0 border=0>
<tr valign=top><td>
<A HREF=http://www.google.com/search>
<IMG SRC=http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_25wht.gif border=0 ALT=Google align=middle></A>
</td>
<td>
<INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=31 maxlength=255 value="">
<INPUT type=submit name=sa VALUE="Search">
<INPUT type=hidden name=cof

VALUE="T:black;ALC:red;LC:blue;AH:center;VLC:purple;GL:0; S:http://bluehost.com;AWFID:d75114acbd5748ba;">
<font face=arial,sans-serif size=-1><input type=hidden name=domains value="bluehost.com"><br><input type=radio

name=sitesearch value=""> Search WWW <input type=radio name=sitesearch value="bluehost.com" checked> Search bluehost.com

</font><br>
</td></tr></TABLE>
</FORM>
</center>
<!-- Search Google -->