Full-text Search with Sphinx and PHP

Sphinx is an open source search server which combines very fast full-text search with a great scalability. It's growing up fast and we not only inventing new features for full text search itself, but also creating new ways to integrate Sphinx into PHP based applications.If you are not yet using Sphinx, we'll be highlighting some key steps on how to serve Full-Text queries to your PHP based applications from start to finish.

If you are an advanced Sphinx Search user, this talk will describe where one can offload MySQL or standard Database functions to Sphinx. From some specific queries one can run on the Sphinx to how to increase both performance and scalability of your applications (web-based or otherwise).

Besides tips and tricks centered around integration with PHP/MySQL based applications, you will learn about the recent 2.0.1 release straight from the proverbial 'horse's mouth.' This talk will utilize and focus on real-world examples from installation and integration to handling search results.

Sphinx is the acronym for SQL Phrase Index. Some key features of this search engine are (from official site):

1. high indexing speed (upto 10 MB/sec on modern CPUs)
2. high search speed (avg query is under 0.1 sec on 2-4 GB text collections)
3. high scalability (upto 100 GB of text, upto 100 M documents on a single CPU)
4. supports distributed searching (since v.0.9.6)
5. supports MySQL natively (MyISAM and InnoDB tables are both supported)
6. supports phrase searching
7. supports phrase proximity ranking, providing good relevance
8. supports English and Russian stemming
9. supports any number of document fields (weights can be changed on the fly)
10. supports document groups
11. supports stopwords
12. supports different search modes ("match all", "match phrase" and "match any" as of v.0.9.5)
13. generic XML interface which greatly simplifies custom integration
14. pure-PHP (ie. NO module compiling etc) search client API

Watch Online : 
http://www.ustream.tv/embed/recorded/14937201

Reference Links :

http://sphinxsearch.com/
http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.sphinx.php

Advantages of Prestashop Ecommerce System

Prestashop is robust, professional grade e-Commerce shopping cart that you can download, install, and use for free. In the back end, you will use a full featured back end to manage your inventory, orders, shipping, and customers in real time. Your customer’s payments are sent directly to your commercial bank account using the latest security technology. You can even add your own modules to the shopping cart.
There are main reasons why we should choose Prestashop E-commerce System:


1. Free and open source : If your budget is tight it will save your money which can be used for advertizing (Google AdWords, banners…)

2. Size of software : 2.2 MB (1292 files)

3. SEO friendly : This is the first thing you should check. It is critical for your web store to be SEO friendly. It is easy to change URLs, Title tags in Prestashop so your SEO experts will be happy with this platform.

4. Animated add to cart : Prestashop has in-built animated add to cart feature.

5. Multilingual : In most cases you’ll need to translate your web store in one or few languages. Prestashop supports all major languages.

6. Prestashop is easy to develop : It’s important to know that there will be developers who can help you for a reasonable price and within reasonable period of time. For e.g. Magento developers are quite expensive because Magento  is not easy to maintain (develop) – it’s quite complicated system.

7. Fast and it does not require expensive servers to run : We tried Magento but it required too much server resources and configuration so we went back to Prestashop.

8. Many free modules : You can start your shop in minutes if you are in a rush and of course you save money.

9. It has modules and themes shop : You can buy required module or theme and improve your shop in minutes. Take a look here. Prestashop validates those modules and ensures quality – so you are not taking any risks. Besides unique solutions costs much more. Developers can sell modules multiple times so they charge less and they are wiling to fix their bugs because they get money for their products.

10. It’s easy to learn : You do not have to be an e-commerce expert to master Prestashop.

11. It has big community : Check Prestashop forum. You’ll find answers to most of your questions.

12. It is rapidly improving : Sometimes it’s annoying because you have to update your Prestashop constantly. But every new release gets better and better. E-commerce is changing rapidly so does and Prestashop.

Comparison between Magento and Prestashop Ecommerce System

Hello Friends..Thanks for your comments on my previous blog comparison between Magento and Zen-cart.
Recently i finished one project in Prestashop and i found that its very good E-commerce system for small business solution.  And also i found prestashop and little less feature than Magento Provides, Here below i provide brief comparison between Magento and Prestashop

About Magento:

Magento is Open Source eCommerce software. Magento eCommerce was launched on March 31, 2008. Within two years of development, Magento has become one of the most popular eCommerce software.

About Prestashop:

PrestaShop is Open Source e-commerce software for Web 2.0. PrestaShop is available as licensed software and was officially launched in August 2007 for small and medium enterprises. Prestashop is based on the Smarty template engine.

Comparison between Magento & Prestashop

1. Size of software

Presta - 2.2 MB (1292 files)

Magento 10.3 Mb (5521 files)

2. Installation

Prestashop installation requirements are less.

Magento installation needs a lot of extensions like PDO, CURL etc

3. Features

When it comes to features, Magento is a way ahead from Prestashop. Customer groups, product comparison, CMS are there in Magento. Magento’s SEO features make it the most suitable ecommerce software. Magento also provide Multi-Store feature which is very powerful. When it comes to design also, Magento is a clear winner.

Prestashop’s search feature is very impressive. The search on Prestashop frontend is relatively faster than magento.

4. Code contrast

Prestashop is based on PHP5 and Smarty template engine. The first model MVC is not excellent. It will be difficult if you touch the first Prestashop code. The line of code is much more for smarty adoption; which increases the workload for extending development.

Magento adopts Zend framework. The developers are not only required to master PHP, but also required to have good knowledge about Zend framework.

5. Shipping & Payment Modules

Magento offers wide range of shipping and payment modules, whereas such feature is missing in Prestashop.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Magento is relatively more SEO friendly than Prestashop.

7. Design Flexibility

Design of Magento seems to be difficult than Prestashop. So, if you don’t have much technical skills and you want to customize the Magento Design, then you should hire magento expert.

8. Backoffice

The back office of Magento is less intuitive which requires more technical skills to manage it effectively. Whereas, backoffice of Prestashop is relatively simple and easy.

9. Community

Magento has comparatively larger community. Magento Community have 130,000 members, Prestashop have 30000 members. (Figures are approximate).

Function contrast:

Features	Prestashop	Magento
Open Source	100%	100%
Pricing	Free	Free
Templatable	Smarty	Smarty
Multi-Language	Yes	Yes
Multi-Currency	Yes	Yes
Product Reviews	Yes	Yes
Product Ratings	Yes	Yes
Downloadable	Yes	Yes
Related Products	Yes	Yes
Product Features	Yes	Yes
Newsletters	Yes	Yes
Discount Coupon	Yes	Yes
SEO URLs	Yes	Yes
Backup & Restore	Yes	Yes
Printable Invoices	Yes	Yes
Sales Reports	Yes	Yes
Free Shipping	Yes	Yes
Wholesale	Yes	Yes
News & Events	No	No
Wish List	No	Yes
Testimonlals	No	No
Track order	No	No
F.A.Q	No	No
Gift Certificate	No	No
Recently Viewed	No	No
Points	No	No
Bulk Category Add	No	No
Bulk Product Add	No	No
Product Comparison	No	Yes
Statistics	Yes	No
Affiliate	No	No
Memberships	Yes	No
One-page Checkout	No	No
Order Barcode	No	No
Merchandise return (RMAs)	No	No
RSS Feed	No	Yes
TAG	No	Yes
Send to friend	No	No
Access Restrictions	No	No
Live Chat Software	No	No