WebNowse BETA Help
Queries
Queries tab settings are the only part where WebNowse needs the help of a human user in order to work. Queries define a set of generic search URLs that WebNowse selects randomly to start nowsing time after time. For best results, you should have an as huge and variable queries list as possible.
WebNowse comes with a list of predefined queries, but this list is by no means complete. It is strongly recommended that you add your own entries to this list, or customize it. The more different queries you have the more random nowsing will be.
Web sites may change their search URLs often. Do not rely on the default queries that come with WebNowse, but maintain your own list time after time.
The query URLs do not need to be limited to search engines only. Any big site, such as, myspace.com or youtube.com, visited by a lot of people, that has a search box will do. Big foreign web sites, or big directory sites, with a lot of links, are also good candidates.
To add a query URL from a search enabled web site, for example youtube.com, do a search in the web site with a 'test' (without ''') word. Then copy the URLs shown in the browser address bar:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=test&search=Search
After you do this, replace (search and replace with a text editor), the 'test' word with '<*>':
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=<*>&search=Search
This is now a valid query to use with WebNowse. WebNowse will replace '<*>' with random words it collects in the pages it visits.
You should not be limited only to the first page query. Second page queries are also good. For youtube.com, the second page of search with 'test' looks like:
http://youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos& search_query=test&search_sort=relevance& search_category=0&search=Search&v=&uploaded=&filter=1&page=2
The URL line is broken here to make it fit better to the page, but you should enter one query in one line. Replacing again 'test' with '<*>' will give a valid query to use with WebNowse:
http://youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos& search_query=<*>&search_sort=relevance& search_category=0&search=Search&v=&uploaded=&filter=1&page=2
If you leave the queries list empty, the default WebNowse queries list will be used.
Only GET queries can be used with WebNowse. Most web sites have only GET queries. Even those web sites that use POST queries if the first page, use often GET queries in other pages.
It is recommended to share your query URL list with other users and merge query URL lists from other user (after you test them first!) to your query list.
Filtering
If a visited URL (apart of query URLs) contains one of the strings listed if the filtering box, it will be ignored. Normally, you should enter here string that uniquely identify web sites you do not want WebNowse to spend much time, such as, search engines.
This having been said, it is often not possible to filter internal search engines URLs, because most search engines use track URLs in the front of URLs shown to the user, so the filtering option of WebNowse is not that useful as it seems. As a rule of thumb, you can ignore and do not care about filtering at all. WebNowse has other ways to find out which proper URLs to visit or not.
If you leave the filter list empty, the default WebNowse filter list will be used.
WebNowse visits only http:// or https:// protocol URLs. It does usually a GET, but occasionally it does also POST, and submits forms.
