Objective

To provide sites hosted on the Arts & Sciences with site specific search services.  The Arts & Sciences search engine, Orbits, currently scans and indexes over 50,000 web pages within the Tufts domain on a weekly basis.  In addition to providing search services for the Tufts community in general, the Orbits search engine can provide specific searches for your web site.  Upon request, ITS will set up a site specific catalog that reindexes on a nightly basis as well as the basic HTML form code required to return the search results from your site using the standard orbits branding.  If you wish to have a site specific search that incorporates your site's branding into the search results, ITS can be commissioned to create the search results page.

Policy & Guidelines

Setup Process

1. The Information Provider for the site contacts ITS, requesting the site specific search.
2. ITS will then create the search catalog and the required HTML form to trigger the search.  The form in question will be emailed to the Information Provider so they can place the code into their site.  Please allow five business days for the processing of the request.
3. The Information Provider incorporates the HTML form into the site.

Policies

Site specific searches can only be requested for sites hosted on http://ase.tufts.edu.

Full reindexing of a site will be performed on a weekly basis (a full reindex is a complete scan of the site which not only identifies content changes on pages, but also identifies new pages added to the site).

Incremental reindexing of a site will be performed on a daily basis excluding the day of the full reindex (an incremental reindex will scan currently indexed pages for content changes; newly added pages will not be identified by this type of reindex).

Fees

No fee is associated with site specific searches if the requestor chooses to make use of the standard Orbits branding.  If the requestor wants the search results to have the branding of their site, a development fee of $25 per hour will be charged to create the results form.  The time required to create the form varies, but is dependant on the complexity of the site's current branding.  Fees are subject to change as needed.