Step 2: Create a Profile

A profile is a collection of data (URLs/documents) to be searched, plus the settings that control that search; a profile must be created and walked before searches can occur.

On the Profiles page, a profile may already have been created by Thunderstone if you requested it when ordering. If so, you may click on the profile name and proceed to the last step, searching. Otherwise, create a new profile.

Enter a name for the new profile, and choose a profile type. A Standard profile is just that - a standard profile for walking - and is usually what you'll want to create, especially for the first profile. A Meta Search profile does not walk data itself, but merely searches and aggregates results from one or more other profiles; see here for details. A Parametric profile is like a standard profile, but with parametric fields for enhanced search and facet capabilities customized to your data set; see here for details. After setting a profile name and type, hit the Create Profile button to create the profile.

If Parametric was chosen as the profile type, and entities have been defined (here), a Select Entities page will appear, where entities to be used with the new profile may be chosen. It is not necessary to choose entities at profile creation, as they may be added or removed later as well (via Data from Field rules; see here). However, selecting entities now allows the Parametric Search Appliance to automatically create Parametric Fields and Data from Field rules for them, simplifying profile setup.

If Parametric was chosen as the profile type, another page will appear, where Parametric Search fields may be defined for the profile. For example, if there is a <meta name> field in your data called Author, enter Author in the Name column, and select Text for its Type.

It is not necessary to define any fields just to get a profile up and running, and you can still search any <meta> field even without defining Parametric Search fields (though not as flexibly). Later, after you're comfortable with basic operations, you can read chapter 4 (here) for details on Parametric Search fields, and define a new profile with more detailed fields if needed. Hit Create Profile when you are done defining fields. Up to 50 may be defined. the Parametric Search Appliance will automatically create generic Data from Field rules for the fields, to populate them; these may be altered later if needed.

A new profile will be created but a site walk/index will not be started yet. You are then presented with the main walk settings page. Use the Base URL setting to specify the starting point of your walk. This is often the homepage of a site, or the sitemap page.