Reset the default search collection

Under certain circumstances, we might want to change the configuration of the portal site search collection. In this case, we must re-create the collection, as search collections cannot be modified.

The portal site default search collection is created at the first time when an administrator navigates to the search administration portlet Manage Search. This process requires considerations about the ConfigEngine tasks related to the portal and Portal Search. Consideration must also be given about the sequence by which after completing these tasks. An example scenario might be to run a portal database transfer, for example, from the default database to a different database. In this case, create the portal site collection by navigating to the Manage Search portlet before you transfer the database. Otherwise, the portal site collection is not available after the database transfer.

If we created the portal site collection by navigating to the Manage Search portlet before configuringd the portal and Portal Search, we might need to re-create the search collection. Example scenarios are as follows:

• If the preferred language for the portal site crawler user ID did not match the language of the portal site search collection.

• If we decide to change the default directory location for search collections in the portal installation.

• If the file path length for search collections exceeds its limit of 118 characters, the collection cannot be created. In this case specify a shorter value for the parameter DefaultCollectionsDirectory.

  This file path length problem can occur particularly when the portal site collection is created on one of the following operating systems:

  • AIX
  • HP-UX
  • Linux
  • Solaris

  For details about this length limitation, see the topic about what to do if Creating the portal site search collection fails.

• To turn the summarizer off so summary information is not generated for the portal and web content.

• To change the name of the search collection.

1. Complete the required ConfigEngine tasks, such as language or path settings

2. Create a search collection with the appropriate configuration settings.

3. Export the content sources from the default search collection.

   In a default portal installation, these sources are the Portal Content Source, which contains portal pages and portlets, and the WCM Content Source, which contains web content.

4. Import these exported content sources into the new search collection.

5. We can now delete the default search collection.

Results

Portal Search starts a new crawl on the portal site search collection.

1. On a multilingual portal site, we can create multiple collections in different languages. For details, see the topic about Crawling a multilingual portal site.

2. When we start the crawl for the first time, a warning message might display. We can ignore this message. See the topic about Tips for Portal Search crawls.

Parent Search and crawl portal and other sites

Related tasks:
Configure the default location for search collections
Crawl a multilingual portal site
Export and import search collections
Tips for Portal Search crawls
The portal site search collection fails
Manage Search