Several years ago, there was a Sphider for WordPress introduced. It was based on the 1.3.4 version of Sphider. Time moved forward, Sphider for WordPress did not. You can still find it. It just most probably isn’t going to work.
A few months back we tried to update it. THAT was a lost cause! So now we have taken our newest Sphider and have started to convert it. It does work, mostly. Still having a few issues, such as suggest doesn’t work and we aren’t sure why not. Also having trouble getting the search integrated into WordPress, although there has been some progress there.
Naturally, since this is a tiny blog, there isn’t much we can thoroughly test it on. Give us a bit more time to get the integration part down and maybe we’ll put it out as a beta, even without suggest working. But maybe we’ll find the problem there, too.
That would be nice, a working version of Sphider for WordPress.
UPDATE: December 15. Integration with WordPress has been accomplished. Suggestions still are not working. Being able to spider and search from WordPress is still a significant achievement. The MAJOR components have been tested and are functional. Still need all the minor branches to be tested.
UPDATE: December 23. Suggestions STILL not working, but Sphider now does a re-index when a post is added or edited. Duplicate domains are being entered in the domains table, but that should be an easy fix. Getting closer to being generally usable.
What is the status of Sphider for wordpress?
I’m sorry to disappoint, but the effort has basically hit a wall. I have not been able to find a way to get suggestions to work in any meaningful way. Smooth integration into a users WordPress theme is another issue. Since the time I did the beta, Sphider has had a new version, plus added PDO support which is a separate build. Between the two we are looking at SQL using MySQLi/MySQLnd in one version, and PDO in the other. WordPress, however, requires the wpdb Class which is loosely based on ezSQL. Not being an experienced WordPress developer of any kind (this beta is my sum total of experience), I’m stumbling in the dark. It really is surprising that the beta, rough as it is, works as well as it does. I’m not sure when, or if, I will give it another shot.
If anyone more experienced in WordPress wants to pick up what I have and carry on, they are welcome to do so.