Zoom Search Engine

Any helping hand is more than welcomed when it comes to designing your web page, so please welcome Zoom Search Engine. It won't construct the web site for you, but it will create a powerful search engine.

Installing this program to your machine is not any different from anything else you've installed. You'll have to deal with a standard installation wizard that won't bug you with additional stuff to be installed or system restart. In one minute, tops, you can have a really useful tool ready for use.

Starting the program for the first time may induce a panic attack, but you should really stay calm. There's nothing to be worried about. The interface is full of buttons and menus, but they're all neatly organized for easy access. The top menus basically do the same things the buttons do, so there's no real threat of getting lost.

The process follows four simple and unrestricted steps. First, you need to index your site. You can do this either in spider mode which scans the actual web page or you can do it in offline mode, which scans a targeted directory. The second step is typing the URL of the site or the path of the folder, the third step is selecting a platform like PHP, ASP, JavaScript or others and finally, start the indexing. The program will scan your pages and create a set of index files for the search engine. When this is done, you can upload your index files directly to your web site or save them to a CD or DVD or your local intranet server. Zoom Search Engine also has a built in wizard you can use. Just click it and answer it's questions.

It's actually funny how a program that looks so loaded with stuff can be so easy to use. The long list of buttons you'll first notice on the interface are all there so that you can make all kind of settings to the search engine. However, this long list of parameters you can tweak requires you to have a bit of advanced knowledge, but nothing too serious like code writing. Web designers, developers and anyone who works with websites should feel right at home.

If you don't feel like buying this software, the free edition is addressed to small personal web sites and it can index up to 50 pages, which doesn't sound like it's too little. The standard edition let's you index up to 100, the professional, 200 thousand and the enterprise can support up to approx. one million.

pro:
The main function of this software is easily done in a couple of steps, but the options and the settings you can make come in a very wide range. A real thumbs up goes to Wrensoft, especially for how the free and premium packages work.

con:
From a technical and aesthetic point of view, there's nothing wrong with Zoom Search Engine. There's something wrong with it only if you know nothing about web developing.

You don't need to know anything about scripting or editing. Zoom Search Engine let's you create a powerful search engine with minimum effort.