Reset the portal site collection

If you change the configuration of the portal site search collection, recreate or reset the collection.

The portal site default search collection is created at the first time when an administrator navigates to the search administration portlet Manage Search. This requires considerations about the configuration tasks related to the portal and Portal Search and about the sequence by which you perform these tasks. An example scenario might be that you want to perform 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 will not be available after the database transfer.

Under certain circumstances you might want to change the configuration of the portal site search collection. In this case recreate the collection, as search collections cannot be modified. This can become necessary, if created the portal site collection by navigating to the Manage Search portlet before you completely configured the portal and Portal Search. Example scenarios:

• If created the portal site collection before you configured the end user portlet Search and Browse to the full extent as required by the portal installation, you might need to reset the portal site collection after you have completed the portal configuration. Example scenarios:

  • To have summaries created for the documents during a crawl.

    In this case select Automatic from the selection pulldown list under Select Summarizer when you recreate the portal site search collection.

  • To restrict the searchable Web space of the portal site by limiting the subset of pages that is available to your users for search. In that case create a new crawler user ID for the portal site collection with access rights to the limited page set as required. You then create the portal site collection again. When creating the portal site content source, you specify the new crawler user ID and password instead of the default user ID wpsadmin.

• If you decide to change the default directory location for search collections in the portal installation. For information about how to do this, refer to Configure the default location for search collections.

• If you decide to change the default language of the portal or the portal site search collection. If you have a multilingual portal and users with different language preferences, refer to Crawl a multilingual portal site.

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

• If the preferred language of the browser of the portal server was not set to the language of the portal installation.

• If you initiated the portal site collection before configuring the Manage Search portlet for remote search in a cluster. In this case the default portal site search collection is only available on the primary node of the cluster and not on the remote server. After you recreate the portal site collection, it will be available for search on all nodes of the cluster.

• 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. For details about how to configure this parameter refer to Configure the default location for search collections. This file path length problem can occur particularly when the portal site collection is created under UNIX operating systems. For details about this refer to Creating the portal site search collection fails.

In such a scenario, first perform the required reconfiguration tasks, for example for the language or path settings. After you have completed these, recreate the portal site collection. To do this...

1. Navigate to the Manage Search portlet by clicking Administration > Search Administration > Manage Search.

2. Click Search Collections.

3. Delete the Portal Content search collection by clicking the appropriate Delete icon and confirming the deletion.

4. Return to the main Manage Search panel by clicking the Manage Search link in the breadcrumb trail at the top of the portlet.

5. Click Search Services.

6. Click the Edit icon for the Default Portal Search Service. If created a new search service for the portal site search collection, click the Edit icon for that search service.

7. Set the value for the parameter PortalCollectionForceCreate to on .

   This triggers a new crawl on the portal site at the next time at which an administrator navigates to the Manage Search portlet.

8. Click OK to save your updates. Manage Search returns to the Search Services panel.

9. Navigate to the Manage Search portlet by clicking Administration > Search Administration > Manage Search.

Portal Search performs a new crawl on the portal site search collection. It also resets the value for the parameter PortalCollectionForceCreate to off , so that you do not need to do that manually.Notes:

1. On a multilingual portal site you can create multiple collections in different languages. For details refer to Crawl a multilingual portal site.

2. When you start the crawl for the first time, this might result in a warning message. You can ignore this message. For more detailed information refer to Crawl a portal site for the first time can result in a message.

Parent topic:

Search your local portal site

Related tasks

Configure a crawler to search your local portal site
Crawl a multilingual portal site
Configure search on a secured portal site
Configure the default location for search collections

Related reference

Hints and tips for using Portal Search

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