The Search Components Online Web site offers a good selection of resources devoted to open source and commercial search components.  The entry, “Solr and PHP-based Enterprise Search,” provides how-to guidance on creating your own search application by combining the power of Solr with PHP.

The author begins:

If you’re interested in search technology (why else are you reading this blog?), you may like the post we discovered over at IBM developerWorks. Author Martin Streicher of McClatchy Interactive wrote the article (and the code) Enterprise search with PHP and Apache Solr, which describes how to create a search application . . . Maybe not ‘enterprise’ search – before you really can use the apps to search your own content, you need to get it into Solr, which means SMPO – a small matter of programming. But at least this article gives you a head start, some templates you can use to model your app, and great sample code.

Do-it-yourself is great for those who have the developer know-how and the available free time.  However, for other users who want to quickly solve their search problems with the power of Solr, LucidWorks might be a better solution.  LucidWorks Search is a development platform built on Lucene and Solr and available in a variety of distribution options.  The product is fully supported and training is also available, providing a Solr solution without the hassle.

Emily Rae Aldridge, September 11, 2012

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