Enable anonymous users to search the public pages of the portal

We can enable anonymous users (unauthenticated users) to search public pages of the portal using a portal search portlet.

To do this, you need to complete the following tasks:

• Make the Search Center portlet available on a public page of the portal, so that users can access it without having to log in to the portal.

• Enable public sessions for the portal. The reason is that the Search Center portlet needs a valid session for its run time, and by default, sessions are not enabled on anonymous pages in the portal. By default, sessions are only created when a user authenticates and logs in to the portal.

• Have or create our own custom search scope. We can edit our own custom scopes, but we cannot modify the default search scopes to give anonymous users access.

1. Put the Search Center portlet on a public page.

2. Give the Anonymous Portal User group access permission to the Search portlet that you make available to anonymous users, and to the page on which that portlet is. To do this, we can use the User and Group Permissions portlet, the Resource Permissions portlet, or the Manage Portlets and Manage Pages portlets.

3. Give the Anonymous Portal User group access to the Search collections. To do this, use the User and Group Permissions portlet or the Resource Permissions portlet. From the list of Resource Types, select PSE Sources, then select the required search collections that you make available to public users, and assign the Anonymous Portal User access to those search collections.

4. Optional: Create a custom search scope, if you did not create one before already. For details about how to do this, see Manage and administer Portal Search, section Create a new search scope.

5. Give the Anonymous Portal User group access to the Search scope:

   1. Click Administration > Manage Search > Search Scopes.

   2. Locate the scope you want the anonymous user to use and click Edit Search Scope.

   3. Click Yes to enable the option Visible to Anonymous Users.

6. Enable public sessions by setting the parameter public.session to true in the portal Navigator Service. For details about portal service configuration parameters and how to set them refer to the following link.

7. Restart both WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal for the changes to take effect.

Parent: Search by external users on the portal site
Related:
Set service configuration properties
Related reference:
Portal configuration services