[wp-hackers] Search Results based on Geodata

[Mike Schinkel]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 5:51 PM, Michael D Adams wrote:
> My suggestion to plugins that want to offer this type query (or to
> speed this query up if it ends up going into core) would be to require
> sphinx: http://sphinxsearch.com/
> 

> Sphinx adds a dependency that not every blog will be able to install,
> but it's super fast and has great geo search built in.

Using Sphinx is likely out of scope for this project, but what is required to host sphinx?  Wouldn't we need to have a VPS or our own host server to install and run it?  Do you have specific experience with it?

-Mike