Site Search - let me count the ways...

I'm looking to integrate a site search for a new customer and i'm not quite sure which way to go.

As for the site, it's fairly middleweight.
- it is bilingual
- will have about 150-200 pages, growing rather slowly, plus a blog.
- it's hosted on a managed virtual server, where i cannot install any Java stuffs

To list the options i have found so far:

SimpleSearch
All content is in TVs, so no go?

SOLR
I can't install SOLR on our managed server and i don't want to be responsible for an unmanaged server, not my cup o' tea.
But i found something like https://opensolr.com/, which seems to be a SOLR server in the cloud and would be about 16$-30$ / month.
Could i maybe use this with SimpleSearch?
Or maybe just without it?

advSearch
Looking quite promising actually.
Hasn't been updated since Nov 2012. Is it still alive?

Google Custom Search Engine
I would like to use it here, but customer does not like Google.
Is 100$/year.

Sphider.eu
http://www.sphider.eu/about.php
Free PHP spider. Sounds ok, but also no update since 2009 (but security fix in 2013).
But forum seems to be still active.

Swiftype
https://swiftype.com/features
Alternative to Google CSE. Search engine as a service. But quite pricey. 49$/month.


I'm thinking I'm probably not the first to include a search engine into a modx project, so most of have had to make the decision once before.
What are your thoughts? Any alternatives?

Thx. [ed. note: itWillBeOk last edited this post 12 years, 5 months ago.]

I like simpleSearch
If it doesn't do what you need, you can allways create a custom driver

https://forums.modx.com/thread/87899/simplesearch-searching-tv-content

Thanks Bruno.

And now i see that there is also a property, which would help to get search results with some quality.

I'm no expert in mySQL performance. Will there be a point in site size, when querying the resource TV table will be noticably slower than querying an indexed site, like advSearch would have?

How about query highliting in search results? Mosts texts in TV fields will be written in Markdown. Any problems with that?

Quote from: itWillBeOk at May 05, 2014, 11:30 AM

SOLR
I can't install SOLR on our managed server and i don't want to be responsible for an unmanaged server, not my cup o' tea.
But i found something like https://opensolr.com/, which seems to be a SOLR server in the cloud and would be about 16$-30$ / month.
Could i maybe use this with SimpleSearch?
Or maybe just without it?

advSearch
Looking quite promising actually.
Hasn't been updated since Nov 2012. Is it still alive?

I have forked it:
AdvSearch with Solr
https://github.com/goldsky/AdvSearch/blob/engine-controllers/core/components/advsearch/controllers/advsearchsolrcontroller.class.php

I will try to upload a beta testing of it in this week.

Alright Goldsky! New Option.

So, since you are actively working on/with advSearch, i'm suppose you are saying it is still very usable, despite no updates since 2012?

Could you comment on the SOLR/Server issue?
Since i cannot run it on the customers managed server, is the approach of having it run on a different server practicable? And if so, have you any opinion on opensolr.com or similar services? I'm frankly not able (or willing) to keep a server running in a responsible (or any other) manner.

Thanks so much for your input.

I've never tried opensolr
I installed it on our server.