Integrate Custom External Search Engine to Search all files on server?

Greetings:

I am tasked with evaluating www.remarpro.com server download, not as a blogging tool, but as a potential help/support site tool (by the way, if a WP version were actually DESIGNED for this purpose, it would blow away every Help Authoring Tool (HAT) currently on the market!! and these server HAT’s, e.g. RoboHelp Server, start at $3000 and go up from there!! — you heard it here first ;-).

OK, back to initial questions. The first issue I see is that there will be no way to search across all files on the server, including all WP “static pages” and all other .html pages which comprise existing user guides (linked to and opening in a new window from the WP static pages). We’d like to integrate a full featured search engine, like ZoomSearch, and include this search box on all WP pages in place and instead of the WP search box, which is essentially useless to us if it just searches our few WP pages. The number of results in searching plugins and this forum with the search term “search” is overwhelming, so I need some experienced guidance here.

Fast on the heels of the first question, is there a way to integrate pages apart from the main WP template, i.e., a secondary or child template which has different layout and content? Behind this question is the idea of somehow integrating our existing .html user guides into the WP framework. We can’t have the same sidebar navigation that we’d have on parent WP pages.

One requirement for the WP integrated guide would be some way to have navigation headings (e.g. “Chapters”) with content topic sub-navigation (e.g. “Sections”), preferably expanding/collapsing if possible. Anyone got a www.remarpro.com site with anything like a user guide that I could have a look at?

We do not need the Flash-y frameset, or any HTML framseset, etc. you’ll see there around the content topics, but you can get an approximate idea what our guides are like at https://mywebniche.com/ID/MCNY/RoboHelp/Faculty_IQWeb/userGuide/CourseHome.htm. Unfortunately our actual guides are behind a login.

Finally (for this post anyway ;-), I am impressed at what has been done at https://www.streamys.org/ which I understand to be a www.remarpro.com site — or am I mistaken, and is it a wordpress.com site with all Premium features, or does this distinction matter? Just what plugins are they using to essentially design a custom site while keeping the best of the WP features? I am in serious need of help finding relevant layout customization plugins (and/or templates), and any assitance is keenly appreciated.

regards,

Steven
__________________________
“I am but an egg.”
–Stranger in a Strange Land

P.S. Does anyone know whether it is possible to have WP installed on a server and still run a server Help Authoring Tool with its own installation on the same server??