Enable search on a secured portal site using the default configuration

Overview

To enable immediate use of Portal Search for searching the portal site, the portal install process prepares a default search collection and a content source. To enable that search collection on a secured portal site for search by users, we encrypt the user ID and activate the search collection by starting the crawl and indexing process.

Procedure

1. To encrypt the user ID and password for the crawler, update searchsecret.xml, then run with xmlaccess.sh.

2. Open the Content Sources panel for the portal site search collection.
   Administration | Manage Search | Search Collections | Default Search Collection

3. For the Portal Content Source, set the crawler user ID as described in the following procedure.

   The pre-configured default portal site search uses the default administrator user ID wpsadmin with the default password of that user ID for the crawler. If we changed the default administrator user ID during the portal installation, the crawler uses that default user ID. If we set the crawler to use the user ID wpsadmin, and its default password, we can omit the following substeps and proceed with the next main step. If we changed the password for the wpsadmin or other administrative user ID, or if we changed the default administrator user ID to an ID other than wpsadmin, or to use a separate user ID:

   1. For the Portal Content Source, click the Edit icon.

   2. Update the user ID and password as needed in the Security tab.

   3. Click Save to save the changes.

   Set the preferred language of the portal site crawler user ID to match the language of the portal site search collection that it crawls. If we already started a crawl on the portal site search collection, we must reset the portal site collection.

4. Click the Start Collecting icon to start the crawl.

   The crawler starts collecting and indexing portal pages. By default, the crawl is scheduled to run for 1 hour. The scheduler for regular repeated crawls is disabled by default. If we enable it, the interval for scheduled crawls is every hour. We can set these parameters using the Manage Search portlet:

   1. We can change the duration of the crawl, depending on the size of the portal installation. Edit the portal site content source under General Parameters.

   2. You enable scheduled crawls by clicking the icon View Content Source Schedulers for the content source and clicking Disabled in the status column for the scheduler. The status changes to Enabled.

   3. You change the interval for scheduled crawls by editing the portal site content source, selecting the Schedulers tab, deleting the default scheduler, and defining a new one.

Results

1. When we crawl a portal site, be aware that a Portal Search crawl can use extended memory and time, depending on the Portal Search environment and configuration. For details, see the topic about Tips for Portal Search crawls.

2. If a user tried to use the Search Center by entering a search string in the portal search box in the theme and clicking search before an administrator enabled the portal site search collection, the user must log out of the portal and log back in again to be able to search the portal search collection. This action includes the administrator who enabled the portal search collection.

Parent Configure search on a secured portal site

Related tasks:
Configure a crawler to search the local portal site
Encrypting sensitive data
Reset the default search collection
Tips for Portal Search crawls