For me, though, there had to be a better way.

Generally, when it comes to operating Web servers, whenever you say, "there's got to be a better way," there usually is. And it's usually Linux.

I need to be honest. I'm not a fanatical Linux fan. The underlying architecture of the system is really well done, but if you look at any Linux distribution, including the vaunted Red Hat distribution, it seems like this was an operating system put together by a committee of crazed monkeys. Let me give you two examples.

First, if you install a typical Linux distribution, it'll immediately configure properly for just about any Ethernet device, without needing drivers or any special configuration. Yet Linux makes a big fuss about which monitor you're using, and often you need to hand-tweak refresh rates that never seem to allow for your display to center properly on screen.

Second, if you install a typical Linux distribution, you'll get not one user interface, but a bunch of user interfaces. In fact, not only will you get a bunch of user interfaces, but also they're often all loaded at the same time. And not only are they all loaded at the same time, but also different sets of menu items from the Linux equivalent of the Start menu load different programs depending on the interface. It seems like the Linux-ites couldn't decide on one approach, so they decided to throw it all into the mix. It's rather confusing at times.

Finally, let's assume you want to allow another FTP (File Transfer Protocol) user to use your computer. There's a file called /etc/ftpusers that handles this. Logic would say that if you wanted to give "david" access to your server, you'd stick "david" in /etc/ftpusers. But this is Linux, and logic is the last thing you need. It turns out that the file /etc/ftpusers doesn't contain FTP users. Oh, no! That'd be way too easy. Instead, the file /etc/ftpusers contains a list of people who are not allowed to use FTP. When I'm 120 years old and looking back on my life, I'll still be able to remember the five hours of my life I gave up to this particular brand of Linux perversity.

The fact is, Linux is quirky. If you know all the quirks, Linux will make sense. If you're a Linux fanatic, don't go sending me mail; you know I'm right.

But Linux is also very, very powerful, very, very flexible, and very, very inexpensive (other than the cost of hiring someone who understands all the quirks).

So I figured that if we wanted a powerful, flexible search engine and we didn't want to pay a ton for it, Linux had to have the answer. And, of course, it did.

So, after finally getting Red Hat Linux 7.0 installed, I found the engine itself. I decided that we'd use something called ht://Dig (and yes, the weird punctuation is part of ht://Dig's charm). The ht://Dig program is totally configurable, way the heck fast, and charmingly free. Also, special thanks to all the helpful people on the htdig.org mailing list for helping me figure out how to integrate PHP and ht://Dig.