Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Announce: Opilio 0.92

Author:John VanDyk
Posted:4/25/2000; 8:08:52 AM
Topic:Announce: Opilio 0.92
Msg #:16640
Prev/Next:16639 / 16641

Opilio is a web crawler, search engine and categorical directory built in Userland Frontier.

It's like a combination of the browsable categories of Yahoo! and keyword indexing of the contents of the categories.

It functions as a Manila site and is (mostly) configurable through Frontier's Control Panel. Nearly all administration is browser-based.

Opilio can be used as a subject-specific search engine. Trusted persons called managers keep portfolios of sites. Managers can instruct Opilio to crawl sites in their portfolio(s). As Opilio crawls, it builds a browsable directory from metainformation (META tags) in the pages. You can view and modify the metainformation in Opilio's database. If you turn off category autoapproval, you can build the directory interactively; after crawling Opilio will present you with a list of categories for you to approve or disapprove.

Opilio also supports aliasing of categories and redirection, where one category is mapped to another category for the purpose of classifying incoming documents.

Scenario:

Joe Barton keeps an online newspaper. For years, he has been including a subject-specific meta tag in his online articles:

Now, with Opilio, he sets up a portfolio and has a browsable, hierarchical directory within minutes. Joe takes the rest of the day off.

This is a beta version of Opilio. I am looking for knowledgeable people to provide feedback.

Opilio will be released as free, open-source software. Improvements by the community are welcome and encouraged.

The Opilio website is at http://opilio.ipm.iastate.edu. You can get the beta from there.

On a personal note, I've been using Frontier for nearly 5 years now, benefiting from software written by those in the community. This is my chance to give something back.

John VanDyk

P.S. You can see a working version of Opilio here:

http://search.ipm.iastate.edu/opisearch



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