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Quick start

After you have installed Network Search Engine on your hard disk drive, you need to perform an initial configuration before using it.

1. Click Start - Programs - Network Search Engine - Administration Console to begin initial configuration.

2. In the General window you need to enter a user login name and password. The software requires an existing Windows user account with standard privileges or above to access the network. You can enter either an existing Windows user login name plus password or create a new Windows user specifically for Network Search Engine.

3. Review and, optionally, modify the remaining options and then switch to the Scheduler window. Click Force Complete Crawl: Start. Depending on your network size and server performance the complete crawl process could take several hours. While waiting for it to complete you can configure user access to the search engine. Please follow the steps below.

4. Network Search Engine provides web-based access to its database. To access it you have three options:

Option 1: Built-in web-server

If you decide to use the built-in web-server, there is no additional configuration required. Switch onto the web-server window and click the Start button. If the server starts successfully it will display its status. You can then access it by typing http://localhost/cgi-bin/netsearch.exe in your favorite web-browser. If it does not start then please check the Windows event log for any error messages from the web-server. The web-server always listens on port 80 and may not be able to start if you have another web-server application listening on this port.

Option 2: Installing ISAPI module with the Internet Information Server (IIS)

You need to copy the supplied file netsearch.dll and all the *.htm files from the scripts subfolder in the installation folder to a folder in your web-site that allows ISAPI modules execution. You should also ensure that NTFS permissions and IIS script permissions are set correctly. The exact procedure may differ with various versions of IIS so please refer to your IIS web-server documentation. The files to copy are shown below:

Option 3: Installing CGI executable with a third party web-server

You need to copy the supplied file netsearch.exe and all the *.htm files from the scripts subfolder in the installation folder to a folder in your web-site that allows CGI script execution. These files are shown below. You should also ensure that NTFS permissions and web-server CGI script permissions are set correctly. The exact procedure may differ with various web-servers so please refer to your web-server documentation.

5. Once you have completed one of the three options described above you should test your Network Search Engine installation. Point your web browser to something like this:

The exact URL depends on which of the above options you chose and your web server configuration. If all is well, you will see a welcome page and can try out some searches.

6. Once you have the web-interface up and running you may want to integrate it with your existing web-site. The installed files include HTML file templates. You can open these templates in any HTML or text editor and modify them according to your needs. Alternatively, you could embed the Network Search Engine web-interface into your existing web-site using frames. Please refer to any HTML documentation for details.