Martin Streicher, Editor in Chief, Linux Magazine, posted a new tutorial on IBM developerWorks on how to create a custom search engine for your website using Sphinx, PHP, and MySQL. Sphinx is a free open-source SQL full-text search engine under GPL2 which available under commercial license for embedded use. Sphinx distribution includes four main utility indexer, commandline search, search deamon, and the sphinxapi. The article will give you an in depth introduction on Sphinx integration within your website.

While Google and its ilk are virtually omniscient, the Web's mighty search engines aren't well suited to every site. If your site content is highly specialized or distinctly categorized, use Sphinx and PHP to create a finely tuned local search system.

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Discover how to add a fast, capable, open source, and free search engine to a PHP site. Little of the visible Web site is developed here. Instead, the focus is on the components required to deliver effective search results: the database, the index, the search engine, and the PHP application program interface (API).