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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Dec 20 7:20 am)
Subject: How to set up a data base search site?
No, not Google.
I want to set up a site that can search site similar to what "Whatever3D" was.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
oh, I remember it. I miss it dearly...;) Whatever they make online searchable databases, I dunno...SQL? Heck, I'm still using Access.
I could create a spreadsheet out of what I've downloaded over the years, 'tho it's all free stuff. (I gave Trekkiegrrrl a site list from about 8 years ago, not sure how current that one would be).
If you want either, let me know. Ain't what you're looking for, but it's a start...;)
I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit
anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)
Quote - Unfortunately I don't remember Whatever3d.com. Can you give me an idea of what kind of queries you are talking about?
For example let's say you were looking for a gauntlets but didn't know where to find any 3d or Poser ready ones. You would go to "Whatever3D" and type in a search word such as "gauntlets" and it would display thumbnails of items the search pulled up. The downloads were from various poser or poser/3d related sites, and the items were either commercial or freebies.
Another example would be if you were looking for "Wings". You could go to Whatever3D and type in wings and it would pull up a bunch of wing related finds from various poser/3d sites.....only reputable sites, not those pirated sites that post warez stuff.
Unfortunately when you search with Google, you pull up a bunch of nonrelavent stuff, including warez sites. Whatever3D seemed to eliminate that kind of stuff.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
Quote - leave it to google. they've got the personnel to keep it current.
p.s. if anybody needs a job in the silicon valley area, now is a good time.
I'm not looking to make a general search engine IE: Google.
I am trying to recreate what Dodger did for the Poser community: A search engine for locating Poser content for sale in many different marketplaces as well as free stuff.
It seemed to comb the legit Poser and other 3D sites, unlike a general search engine like Google.
Please, enough about cloning Google (a general search engine). I've made it clear that is not my interest. So if anyone has some valid suggestions on how to go about setting up a Database Search like "Whatever3D", please give me your input.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
I did some internet sleuthing and I managed to find Dodger's name and what appears to be an email address. I've sent an email. So hopefully he's still using the same internet host and email address.
Hopefully he gets the email.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
I see two main components to getting this done. One is designing the database, the other is populating it. The design would be pretty simple, but getting it populated would be tricky.
I suppose you could start by simply enetring all the legitimate sites that are out there into a table - let's call it WebSites (WebSiteID, Name, URL...). There aren't that many so that would not be that onerous. The hard part is building a table of all the products that each site has. I don't see a simple way of doing that. Maybe that's why Dodger is no longer doing it.
OS: Windows 10 64-bit, Poser: 10
Quote - The only fairly current database of 3d conent sites is on Morphography. You might try site mailing EnglishBob. He might be able to help you.
Whatever3D wasn't a database: it was a search engine. At least that's what the statement from the site used to say:
"A search engine for locating Poser content for sale in many different marketplaces as well as free stuff."
So it sounds like you entered the key term you wanted to find, and it somehow searched the internet excluding all but Poser content.
I'll send a site mail to EnglishBob, next week. I'm in the middle of moving so I don't have a great deal of time this week.
I'm sure this task is going to be more complicated than I imagined based on what I was able to find out about Sean (aka Dodger). The guy has degrees and certificates in all sorts of computer related stuff. I'm still hoping that he gets my emails that I sent yesterday.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
Mystic Nights freebie search is still running. Maybe he/she might be able to give you some information.
http://mystic-nights.com/directory/index.php
I don't do web programming so I can only guess. I'd assume you would have a list of sites. IIRC Google has a web service API you can use, but shooting off real time queries for a long list of sites doesn't seem too practical e.g. what would you query?
I'd think that you'd have a 'bot' of some kind that would periodically check each site's free stuff pages. There are free and commercial web crawler apps that would probably make it easier to automate. You would have a database to store the results. Assuming you have a web host then it would probably be easiest and least expensive to use whatever database they provide. You may find some that already have a simplke template set up for basic database query. You could have just the site or page URL and the item name like Mystic. Adding descriptions and thumbnails would be more complex. As long as you don't hotlink to the downloads, I'm guessing you're OK, though it wouldn't hurt to ask permission to crawl the sites. People can and do have a robots.txt file to prevent their sites from being crawled.
That's just my very off the top of the head guess :-)
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken
Quote - So, when you ran a query, what got returned? Was it a Google type list of links or was it more customized with a thumbnail, site, price, etc.
What got returned were hyperlinked thumbnails for the item. You clicked on the thumbnail and it took you to the download page for the item. And it was "anti-warez", meaning it didn't pull up the warez sites that host Poser related, or 3D related items. Just legit sites.
I do use "Mystic Nights" search, but it only pulls up freebie items, not commercial, and it displays as a link to the entire site with a word list of freebies that can be found on that site, with the item you are possibly looking for, highlighted.
"Whatever3D" showed only hyperlinked thumbnails of the item you were searching for IE: waterfall, gauntlets, fairy wings, cars, chairs etc etc etc. There was no size, but I think it showed the price or at the very least whether it was free or commercial. I can't exactly remember how that part worked. I just know when I searched for "telephone", it showed me a bunch of thumbnails with telephones on it, so I could see if any of the found items was what I was looking for at a glance.
Also, I noticed that there were a few sites around Poser that Whatever3D didn't display from: Daz3D, RDNA, Planit3D, 3D Commune (when it was around). So either they weren't added to Dodger's list, or they had some kind of "Robots.txt" file on their site preventing a search engine from searching it.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
OMG! OMG! OMG! 
I got a reply from Dodger (aka Sean). He said that he is rebuilding "Whatever3D"!!!! 
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
Thanks for the news. I miss that site too and have been watching this thread with intrest.
Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage
Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10
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Anyone remember "Whatever3d.com"? The site you could go to and enter a key word and it showed a list of commercial and free products where that item or similar could be found?
I believe it was a site set up by Dodger from http://www.xfx3d.net/ which also no longer exists.
Ever since that site went down my ability to find poser related items has been severely hindered and I was thinking that it would be nice to have such a site again.
Can anyone provide me with some details about how to go about setting up such as site that has the ability that Whatever3D to search out items on other sites?
"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi