Syrahoo: About this System

Syrahoo.com

About this System

History

Syrahoo was developed by Web Architechs to help promote local business use of the World Wide Web. When Syrahoo first started in December of 1996, there were many other local and state-based indexes, but none of these provided sufficiently convenient access to local Websites, nor did any of the indexes contain a majority of existing Websites. Syrahoo strives to always contain all existing Websites. We also regularly check for broken links and provide you with a content rating, so you can be assured of not wasting your time following the links in Syrahoo.

The search engine accessible from the top of each page searches an index of words taken from the actual Websites by a spider written by us specifically for Syrahoo. This spider is different from all others in that it mines the top two levels of the Websites rather than just a single webpage as all others do. This spider, unlike most others, also follows frame page references. This makes up for great deal of the homepage and frameset page content deficiences found in many local Websites (often the most expensive ones!). Deficiences that will cripple these sites retrieval from all other Internet search engines.

Syrahoo has been moved to mysql and PHP4 and FreeBSD (a great OS when under load) which greatly speeds up page generation.

FAQs

Why doesn't the number of links below a given category equal the number of links the sub-categories beneath that category have?: The number in parenthesis after each category name indicates the number of distinct website links beneath that category. Due to cross indexing, a link may appear in multiple sub-categories, so the total number of links appearing in the sub-categories can be higher than the category above.
My business is not in the Syrahoo area, but I want people in Syracuse to see it anyway. Why can't I get a link?: The limited geographic range is one of our primary features. If a Web surfer is looking for something in Syracuse, they don't want to have to wade through all of the sites in the country or even in the state to find it. However, there are exceptions to this. On a category by category basis we have expanded the geographic range based on visitor needs. These expansions are listed in the Coverage Area page. We expand categories based on log file analysis and the "Not finding what you are looking for?" form. We also consider how far people are willing to travel for a particular category. For example the festivals category covers CNY because people are more willing to travel an hour for a festival than they are to get a pizza.

Privacy Policy

Web Architechs will not attempt to individually identify any user of this system by their IP address. Free-text searches made on the search engine are not linked to a particular visitor's computer. All communication, save URL submissions, will be kept confidential. E-mail addresses collected in the regular course of operating Syrahoo will not be shared with any other party under any circumstances without the explicit permission of the person who owns that address.

Technical Details

Syrahoo is hosted on freeBSD

All programming development is now done on Mac OS X, previous development was done on Suse Linux

Graphics were generated on a Macintosh G3 using Adobe PhotoShop and on a Toshiba Tecra running Suse Linux.

The Webserver software is Apache.

The database software is mySQL.

The database-Webserver interface is PHP, an opensource server scripting tool that is far superior to ColdFusion, LiveWire, and ActiveServer. It compiles directly into Apache, eliminating the inefficient and insecure cgi interface from the system.

Current time in
Syracuse NY

11:07 pm

About this System

History

FAQs

Why doesn't the number of links below a given category equal the number of links the sub-categories beneath that category have?

My business is not in the Syrahoo area, but I want people in Syracuse to see it anyway. Why can't I get a link?

Privacy Policy

Technical Details