# App/Personal wikis/Search

From XOWA: the free, open-source, offline wiki application

## Background

XOWA has a search feature based on page title. It is used for the following:

- The url bar
- The Search bar (next to `Read`, `Edit`, `View HTML`)

The search feature is based off of the PageRank algorithm. Because of the complicated, recursive nature of the algorithm, the index can only be run for the entire wiki at once -- not every time a page changes. For small wikis, search reindexing will complete in a few seconds. For a large wiki like en.wikipedia.org, it could take 12 hours.

## Reindex search

To use the search feature, do the following:

- Create some pages in your wiki. For example, say you create a page called `Example 1`
- From the main menu, select `Personal wikis` -> `Personal wikis list`. Or go to Special:XowaWikiDirectory
- Click the `wrench icon` next to your wiki
- Press the `Reindex search pages` link
- Wait for the process to complete.
- Go to your wiki. Type in `examp` in the url bar. You will see `Example 1` auto-suggested.

## Other links

- App/Search: For details about search query. (You can use booleans and wildcards)
- App/Search/Score: For details about PageRank and scoring

### XOWA

- Main page
- Screenshots
- Video
- Download XOWA
- Download wikis

### Getting started

- Requirements
- Installation
- Simple Wikipedia
- English Wikipedia
- Other Wikipedias

### Android

- Setup
- Video

### Help

- About
- Contents
- Media
- Feedback

### Blog

- Current

### Links

- Wikimedia dumps
- XOWA @ archive.org
- English Wikipedia

### Donate

- archive.org
- Wikipedia
- XOWA