How to ...

How to get started

• Q. What is PHP, ASP, CGI or JavaScript? How do I determine which one I should use?
• Q. How do I add search boxes to my web pages?
• Q. How do I use Zoom on a frames-based website?
• Q. How do I index multiple web sites or sub-domains as one site?

How to customize the layout and appearance of the search template

• Q. How do I modify the appearance of the search form?
• Q. How do I customize the appearance of my search results with CSS?
• Q. How do I put search forms on pages besides the search page? (Or define my own search form?)
• Q. How do I create search forms with images for buttons, etc.?
• Q. How do I make the search results open in a new window (or different frame)?
• Q. How can I add headers & footers to the search template using SSIs or scripts?
• Q. How can I add server-side scripting (eg. PHP, ASP) to the search template?
• Q. How do I create an ASP.NET (or ASPX) search page?
• Q. How do I create a ColdFusion (CF) search page?

How to configure or optimize Zoom

• Q. How do I setup a search page for multiple parts of a website? Or for multiple domains?
• Q. How can I speed up the search results?
• Q. How do I enable search word logging?
• Q. How do I perform advanced searches (or what search tips can I provide to my users)?
• Q. How do I enable highlighting?
• Q. How do I enable autocomplete (aka autosuggest)?
• Q. How do I enable date range searching and sort by date?
• Q. How do I allow partial matching?
• Q. How do I prevent parts of my webpage from being indexed (eg. exclude navigation menus, or page footers)?
• Q. How do I block parts of my website from being indexed (eg. block entire folders or individual files)?
• Q. How do I index protected parts of my website requiring user authentication?
• Q. How do I make some pages appear higher up in my search results? How does Zoom's page score system work?
• Q. How can I force cursor focus on the search box?
• Q. How do I create a self-contained search engine that runs on a CD-ROM (using JavaScript) without a webserver?
• Q. What are all the options for adding a search engine to a CD-ROM?
• Q. How do I schedule Zoom to automatically index on a regular basis?
• Q. How do I schedule Zoom to automatically create reports?
• Q. How do I use the command line options with the Zoom Indexer?
• Q. How do I setup Zoom for foreign language (non-english) support?
• Q. How can I add internal keywords that will not be indexed by external search engines?
• Q. How can I use Zoom to index my site stored in a database (eg. SQL, Access, etc.)?
• Q. How can I use Zoom with NetObjects Fusion?
• Q. How do I enable Jump to match and highlighting within documents?
• Q. How should I index my site if it features a message board, forum, or calendar and other similarly complex scripts?
• Q. How do I use Relative Links for search results in Spider Mode?
• Q. How do I change the User-Agent text?
• Q. Can I use FastCGI with Zoom?

How to setup images, thumbnails and icons with Zoom

• Q. How do I associate images with my search results?
• Q. How do I index image files (eg. JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF)?

Tutorials

• Q. How to create a search engine for your Dreamweaver website
• Q. How to create a multi-criteria search function with custom meta fields
• Q. How to create a search engine for your DotNetNuke website
• Q. How to create a search engine for your Moodle website
• Q. How to create a search engine for your Mambo or Joomla! based website
• Q. How to create a search engine for your Help&Manual Webhelp
• Q. How to create a search engine for your WordPress website
• Q. How to create a search engine for your Drupal website
• Q. How to install Zoom Search Engine for Linux on Amazon Elastic Cloud 2 (EC2)
• Q. How to install Zoom Search Engine for Windows on Microsoft Azure Cloud
• Q. How to use Google AdSense with Zoom
  
• Q. How to create a search engine for a responsive Bootstrap website
  
• Q. How to create a search engine for RoboHelp? [External site, opens in new window]

Foreign language support

See our foreign language support page for more information.

File format issues

• Q. Does Zoom index all the words inside the PDF and DOC documents?
• Q. How do I specify my own titles and descriptions for PDF and DOC files?
• Q. Why are my .desc files not being found by the Indexer?
• Q. How do I index MP3 files?
• Q. How do I index image (JPG, PNG, TIFF or GIF) files?
• Q. What can Zoom index from my AutoCAD DWF files?
• Q. My SWF files are created with Flash 8 (or later) and they cannot be indexed with swf2html. What can I do?
• Q. I am using Vista, and when Zoom indexes a non-HTML file, a security warning appears: "The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?"

Indexing PDF documents

• Q. Why are some of my PDF files failing to index with a "PDF plugin error"?
• Q. Why can't I find words from my scanned PDF files? (PDFs created from scanning in physical documents)

Indexing DOC documents

• Q. Why are some of my DOC files failing to index with a "DOC plugin error"?
• Q. "Error processing DOC file or unable to write to Zoom folder" when indexing a DOC file

Indexing XLS spreadsheets

• Q. Why are some of my XLS files failing to index with a "XLS plugin error"?

Indexing PPT presentations

• Q. "PPT file created with PowerPoint 2007 is not currently supported"

Does Zoom... ?

• Q. Does Zoom support wild card searches for parts of words?
• Q. Does Zoom support searching through PDF files, Word files, ... ?
• Q. Does Zoom run on Linux, BSD, ... ?
• Q. Is there a Linux, BSD, etc.. version of the indexer?
• Q. Does Zoom support PHP X.X?
• Q. Does Zoom work for a dynamically generated site? (with PHP/ASP generated content)
• Q. Does Zoom support ColdFusion based sites?
• Q. Does Zoom index secure web pages (https://) ?
• Q. Does Zoom Search Engine support searching through a database (eg. SQL)?
• Q. Does the spider mode follow .htaccess redirections?
• Q. Does the spider mode support use of the robot exclusion file (robots.txt)?
• Q. What is ZoomSpider or ZSEBOT?
• Q. Does the spider mode support use of the robot exclusion file (robots.txt)?
• Q. Does Zoom support very large sites? What are the practical limits of the size of sites that Zoom can be used with?
• Q. Does Zoom support 64bit operating systems?
• Q. Does the JavaScript version of the search script run on all browsers?
• Q. Does Zoom suit forensics use? Can I use Zoom to search and index a computer for digital forensics purposes?
• Q. Does Zoom work on Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
• Q. Do you still support Masternode?

Troubleshooting problems

General usage issues

• Q. Why is there no search form on my search page?
• Q. Why are some of my pages being skipped by the indexer?
• Q. Why are links in my Javascript menus being skipped?
• Q. I am indexing with spider mode but it is not finding all the pages on my web site
• Q. I get the error [No files found to spider] Check that the URL exists and satisfies the settings in the configuration window
• Q. I've indexed the site, uploaded the files, but I only see the search script code when I open the search page in my browser (or get a prompt asking if i want to download it)
• Q. I can't get authentication to work for spider indexing my site
• Q. I am seeing the wrong text appear in the search results (or the results look strange and messed up)
• Q. Why is there no spacing between my search results?
• Q. Why do some of my files show up in the search results with the current date and time?
• Q. When I click on a link in the search results, I get a 404 "Page Not Found" or "Page Cannot Be Found" error
• Q. What does the "Suspected invalid HTML ..." warning message in the index log mean?
• Q. I am getting an error "Microsoft JScript compilation ..."
• Q. My search page is showing up blank and there is strange code in the source of my template page (eg. "<!--[if gte mso 9]>", "<o:DocumentProperties>", etc.)
• Q. I am having trouble with installing Zoom, is there more information?
• Q. I am having trouble with the "jump to highlighting" script, is there more information?
• Q. Upon installation I get the error message. "This program has been damaged, possibly by a bad sector of the hard drive or a virus. Please reinstall it."
• Q. I am seeing an error like, "... is not a valid Win32 application", when installing or trying to launch the Indexer (is Windows 2000 supported?)
• Q. "Unable to locate component - This application has failed to start because Normaliz.dll was not found. ..."

Dreamweaver Extension issues

• Q. When I try to install the Dreamweaver Extension, the Extensions Manager reports an error message: "...requires a more recent version..." or says that the version is not compatible
• Q. I get the error "Zoom could not run due to installation issues as a Dreamweaver Extension"

Indexer errors and crash issues

• Q. "Error: Access violation at ..." on a computer with IE 5.5 or earlier installed.
• Q. "Error: Could not open file: ....zoom_plugin.out" message when indexing a plugin supported file
• Q. "Error: Windows Internet API is not responding."
• Q. Crash message: "word2txt.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows"
• Q. Spider mode indexing stops responding at a particular URL and CPU utilization is at 100%

For troubleshooting plugin related indexing messages, see the FAQ section for plugins.

PHP related issues

• Q. "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted..." or similar error message
• Q. "Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent..." or similar error message
• Q. "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION..." or similarerror message
• Q. "Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings..." or similarwarning message

ASP related issues

• Q. My search page is not rendering and is timing out (ASP version)
• Q. VBScript error "800a01ad - Can't create object 'ADODB.Stream'"
• Q. VBScript error "800a03ea - Syntax Error"
• Q. VBScript error "8002801d - Library not registered"
• Q. VBScript error "800a0411 - Name redefined"
• Q. VBScript error "0x800A139A - Unexpected quantifier", when using exact phrase searching
• Q. "Error: Page number too big. Make sure ALL index files are updated."

ASP.NET related issues

• Q. Parse Error Message: The format of the 'ZoomASPX' is invalid
• Q. "Could not load file or assembly 'ZoomASPX' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format."
• Q. "Could not load file or assembly..." error regarding a third-party ASP.NET application not related to Zoom
• Q. Configuration error message pointing to a "web.config" source file
• Q. How do I create a search form on ASPX pages?

CGI related issues

• Q. I have uploaded my files but get an error "no search query entered", or "error reading ..."
• Q. I get a "404 Page not found" message when running the CGI.
• Q. I get a "500 Internal Server Error" message when running the CGI.
• Q. I get a "Premature end of script" error
• Q. I get an error similar to "Unrecognized character \x90 ... "
• Q. I get a "The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers" error
• Q. I need help setting up binary CGI support for my Windows IIS server
• Q. The search stats report tool is failing to load my CGI log file
• Q. I plan to host my search engine on Sun Sparc Solaris. Do you have a CGI for Sun Sparc Solaris?
• Q. Search.cgi returns "bad ELF interpreter: No such file or directory"

Javascript related issues

• Q. I am getting the error message "Unterminated String Constant" when I try to load the search.html page.
• Q. In Netscape 7.1, I am getting a "'c' is not a registered protocol" or similar error message when I click on a link - what's wrong?
• Q. On certain browsers I am getting an "Object doesn't support this property or method" error

Sales & License key related questions

• Q. My license key doesn't work?
• Q. Are there shipping/delivery costs if the software is purchased?
• Q. What are the licensing policies for Zoom?
• Q. Is there an annual subscriptions to use the software?
• Q. How does support & maintanence work?
• Q. How do I upgrade to the latest version?
• Q. Can I index multiple sites with one software license?
• Q. I've lost my license key, how can I get it back?
• Q. What happened to Zoom Search Engine for MAC?