Textpattern CMS

#1 2006-01-06 18:42:22

Minty

New Member

Registered: 2006-01-06

Posts: 4

TP managing a .pdf archive?

I’m planning to use Textpattern on a site for a monthly (printed) magazine. In addition to the website, the editor wants to have an on-line searchable archive of pdf files from the printed magazine.

From what I’ve read on the faq’s and forums, it looks as though the archive job would not be for Texpattern, so I’ll have to do it separately, but it would be really neat if it could be integrated. I’d really appreciate any pointers.

An operator needs to upload 48 1-page pdf files each month and the whole archive needs to be searchable. Can TP handle pdf files in this way?

Any suggestions?

#2 2006-01-07 00:42:45

reptilerobots

Member

Registered: 2005-08-20

Posts: 72

Re: TP managing a .pdf archive?

maybe if you could enter the text of the PDFs into the excerpt and then have it search excerpts……..

#3 2006-01-09 18:25:08

Minty

New Member

Registered: 2006-01-06

Posts: 4

Re: TP managing a .pdf archive?

Thanks reptilerobots – I wondered about this, but I really want to eliminate as much from the monthly update as possible, so extracting the text would be an extra step. Still it might be worth doing to save making the archive separate…

#4 2006-01-09 22:44:39

nardo

Member

From: tuvalahiti

Registered: 2004-04-22

Posts: 743

Re: TP managing a .pdf archive?

I guess there’s two issues:

1. maintaining a large index of PDF files (576 a year) – no problem there for txp, perhaps just labour for the operator to assign a category (and possibly a description) to each after they’ve been ftp-ed
2. indexing the content within the PDFs and making this index available to a search tool – would definitely require another application (if you weren’t to copy & paste text into excerpts)

but #2 could possibly be integrated into your website look & feel… ? The search results would just open the PDF from the files folder, so no biggie if it’s not coming via a Txp /download/2 -type link?

I don’t know much about search tools available (Microsoft Index Server did the job at one place) but interested to hear how you go

#5 2006-01-12 08:57:22

Minty

New Member

Registered: 2006-01-06

Posts: 4

Re: TP managing a .pdf archive?

Thanks Nardo

I think it’s going to have to be a separate search tool.

I don’t envisage any problems integrating the look and feel, but (as newbie) I’ll have to dig around a bit more with TXP to see a quick way to build the index of files after they are FTPd.

I didn’t understand your comment ‘….so no biggie if it’s not coming via a Txp /download/2 -type link?’

Regarding search tools, I’ve previously had good results with Zoom from Wrensoft. It’s supposed to be good for PDFs, but I haven’t tried it with them yet.