Improve our internal search engine

[login to view URL] provides PHP scipts for extracting images from web pages. These image sets are called "fuskers". Several dozen websites run our software. They create thousands of new "fuskers" each day. We offer a search engine for finding content on these "network sites" which run our software (try the "Search all fuskers" box at [login to view URL]). Our search engine is very popular, but it has some problems: -Because the network sites often remove fuskers, our search results contain many bad links. -We like our system for popping up results into a new window when you click on a link. However, the current implemention causes Opera to crash, and sometimes won't work if you close the original "target" window of the pop-up. -The search engine doesn't deal well with special characters or Boolean instructions. It should be able to handle some special characters (like "/") but not others, and it should handle booleans like AND, OR, and NOT. The goal of this project is to solve these problems, while respecting the following: -Search results are currently cached for a certain length of time. This will have to be maintianed. -Modifications to the search engine can't harm the speed at which searches are conducted. -Many of the network sites have 10,000s of fuskers. It would be impossible to check each link on each site every day to make sure it is still valid, so the solution will have to involve selective checking based on search results that people might actually visit. -The solution has to be "gentle" on the network sites. We can't just crawl hundreds of pages of a site each minute. -All code outputted to the browser should be XHTML compliant. -All code should be documented according to PHPDoc standards. Solving our search engine problems will require creative thinking. We are open to suggestions for how best to accomplish this. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them before bidding. ## Deliverables 1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. 2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, as follows (depending on the nature of the deliverables): a) For web sites or other server-side deliverables intended to only ever exist in one place in the Buyer's environment--Deliverables must be installed by the Seller in ready-to-run condition in the Buyer's environment. b) For all others including desktop software or software the buyer intends to distribute: A software installation package that will install the software in ready-to-run condition on the platform(s) specified in this bid request. 3) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement). ## Platform PHP/MySQL on Linux