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This topic explains how to adjust the settings for an XperienCentral channel. In XperienCentral, navigate to Configuration > Channel Configuration. See the Setup Tool for information on configuring all other global XperienCentral settings. If your XperienCentral project contains multiple channels, you can select the channel to configure from the "Select Channel" drop-down list at the top of the Channel Configuration panel. Most changes you make to the channel configuration will become available after a browser refresh. Some configuration changes require a restart of XperienCentral (the web server).
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Starting the Search Service
Adding basic search functionality to a website is straightforward. The following are the prerequisites:
- a search service that indexes the website
- a form for entering the search query
- a page on which to display the search results
If your installation already contains a working search service you can skip this section.
The search engine is not a default part of the XperienCentral application; it runs in a separate (Java) process, therefore it has to be started by running either a batch file (Windows) or a shell script (Unix). Because the search engine process is executed in a separate process, it needs to have a basic form of authentication. This is configured in the credentials.xml file. Open credentials.xml in a text editor. It is stored in the search engine conf directory:
- For normal GX WebManager installations on Windows computers this is
<xperiencentral-root>\webmanager-searchengine\target\classes\conf. - For UNIX servers this is normally something like
/vol/www/search/indexer-mywebsite/conf.
Add a valid username and password in the second line of the file:
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<credentials>
<credential pattern=".*localhost.*" type="postform" username="gxsearch" password="Search987">
</credentials>
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The First Site Index
There are two main ways to index the website: manually and automatically. The second is configured by running the search engine at a scheduled time from a cron job or scheduled service. How to configure this is covered in the installation manuals for Windows and Linux product environments. This chapter will describe how to index a website manually, and also on local computers where the indexing is not scheduled.
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Right above the "Search status" information is the "Index URL" pane. This pane contains three fields that tell the search engine
- where to start crawling the website (the "URL" field).
- which domains are allowed (the "host" field). This should contain at least the front-end hostname, the backend hostname. Optionally this can contain front-end and backend alias hostnames. The hostnames must be separated by a comma.
- how deep the crawler goes. Normally this is set to 1, which means the crawler will index the page in the ‘URL’ field plus all the pages that are linked from the "URL" page.
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Click on the [Index] button to start the indexing process. The search engine crawler will open the indexer page and start indexing all the pages and documents. This process will take anywhere from several seconds for a small website to several hours for a large website. For a detailed description of the indexing process see *** Crawling.
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In a normal situation this should return results. If there are zero documents in the index, or if there are documents in the index that are not returned in the search field, or if there is a certain document that’s missing, see ***troubleshooting.
Search Element and Search Results
The Search Element
The basic search element is added to the page by adding the Search element to a page from the Insert menu:
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On most websites the Search element is not placed on one or more pages but rather on a central page section. This is a better solution because you only have to do it once and can centrally manage the Search element. |
Search Results Page
The default search results are displayed with the following basic set of information:
- A number and the title of the page or article
- The bread crumb path or navigation path (for pages only)
- A summary of the contents
Some presentation properties can be changed by creating a design template variant of the "WM Advanced search element".
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Central Search Results Page
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Be sure that the search results page that you select is not visible in the website navigation. |
Additional Indexing Options
Include/Exclude Pages
By default the search engine will index all pages and Content Repository items. It is possible, however to exclude certain pages from the index. Follow these steps:
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Include/Exclude Page Parts
Page parts can be included or excluded in the search index. To specify whether a page part is included or excluded from the search index, follow these steps:
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The result of this configuration depends on the design template of the website. In normal situations, indexing is enabled for the main content page parts, therefore setting the indexing to "No" doesn’t prevent the page part from being indexed. Technically, the "No" setting does nothing and by setting the index to "Yes" the page part is wrapped with <!-- indexer: on --/> and <!-- indexer: off --/> tags. As a result, the indexing configuration in page parts will only be effective for websites where all content is wrapped in indexer: off tags and where individual page parts can be enabled for indexing.
Meta Keywords
Before the rise of internet search engines such as Google, a lot of search engines relied on meta information such as keywords and descriptions on pages. Nowadays meta information such as keywords and descriptions hardly play a role for internet search engines. However, they can still play a role for internal search engines. GX WebManager contains options to configure meta keywords on three levels: 1) for the entire website, 2) for page templates and 3) for individual pages.
On most public websites it is considered bad practice to have identical keywords for a lot of pages. This can result in a lower ranking in internet search engines such as Google. Google expects content and meta information to be relevant, and by assigning a static keyword to all pages this can be considered to be less relevant. Therefore the general advice would be not to use the general keywords for an entire website or in page templates unless there is a special purpose.
Meta Keywords for the Entire Website
To enter keywords that will be added on every page and article go to Configuration > Channel configuration [General]. In the field "Default meta keywords" one or more keywords can be added. Multiple keywords have to be separated by commas.
Meta Keywords for Pages
Meta keywords can be assigned to individual pages. When you assign one or more meta keywords to a page, they override the website-wide meta keyword(s). To assign a meta keyword to a page, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the page.
- Click [Edit] in the Properties widget.
- Click [SEO].
- Enter the keyword in the "Meta Keywords" field. If you enter multiple keywords, separate them with a comma (no space).
- Click [Save].
Search Tips
Any user can have a hard time searching for information by using a search engine. Even when the website is indexed correctly and everything is working, visitors sometimes have problems to find the right information. It can help to display a set of search tips on the page that contains the search element. Some search tips that help to narrow down the search results:
- A search query that contains several search terms that have to be found as a combination can be included in double quotes (“”). This will return results that contain the exact string. For example “Technical University Eindhoven” will only return results that contain this string and not just pages about ‘Technical’, ‘University’ or ‘Eindhoven’.
- Put ‘+’ in front of search terms that must be included. Especially in queries that contain multiple search terms it can occur that search results are returned that contain one of the search terms, and not all. Using the + symbol ensures that at least that search term is included.
- Put ‘—’ in front of search terms that must be excluded.
- Add the wildcard symbol ‘*’ to get search results for that search term plus all variations that start with the search term. For example when searching for ‘shop*’ there could be results that contain ‘shop’, ’shopping’, ’shops’, ’shop-a-holic’, but not ‘bishop’ or ’pawnshop’. The wildcard symbol can only be used after the search string and not before the search term. For example ‘shop*’ is allowed, ‘*shop’ is not allowed.
| Setting | Description |
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| Links outside this channel are allowed | Specifies whether hyperlinks within this channel can link to outside channels. |
| Publish pages in multiple |
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