Search - Giving you a powerful search engine out of the box

Standard Search

The standard search screen is the screen that you will see when you first execute a search request.

Normally a search is established on most sites using our Search Query control, which can be inserted anywhere in your templates.

Again, as with all aspects of the search, when inserting the control you can configure the results page, field weights and other factors to really tailor the search to your requirements.

The standard search results page is normally accessed from a search request using the control identified.

Theme Support as standard

The standard search module has a default simple theme, so it will look good in almost any site without the need for excessive styling.

You can see a screenshot of our standard search results screen put into this site, without any extra styling applied.

Of course, it is normal that you will apply some styling to the search results, which can be done by either choosing an available theme or by adding styles on top of one of the themes.

 

 

Advanced Search

The advanced search allows users to specify other search criteria to refine their search results further.

The query tool, which allows you to build up phrases with "AND" and "OR" operators, can be executed in the standard search by simply using Boolean syntax such as "News module" AND Events, for example.

Some users would not understand how to execute these types of query, so we provide a tool to assist with this.

 

 

Within the advanced search it is also possible to filter by Content types. You may only be interested in searching for web pages or Word documents, for example.

The advanced search can be configured to show a list of top level areas of the site to filter on.

A screenshot of the European University Institute website shows this functionality in action.

Securing your Search

Using the Contensis standard or enterprise search, you can simply tick a box to enable permissions. Once you have ticked the box, the user doing the searching will only get the results they have permission to see. It is as simple as that.

If you want the results to be shown, but for the user to be sent to a call to action or access denied screen when they attempt access, just don't tick the enable permissions box.

Many search systems have problems when implementing permissions, especially when the permissions can be completely granular. The Contensis Search gets around this problem, and allows for a totally permission-sensitive search to be carried out.

 

Include in Search

Within Contensis, at both folder and content level, it is possible to include and exclude items from the search. This functionality can be very useful as it gives individual editors the choice of whether their content is to be returned when a search is executed.

The options can be accessed from the properties tab at any time whilst editing any piece of content or, if you are a folder administrator, you can make changes in bulk to content and folders in the section for which you have administration rights.

Indexing

The Contensis indexing service has the job of indexing all content in the Contensis repository. Quite simply, as soon as a new piece of content is uploaded or created, the indexing engine will go to work to index it for search purposes.

This data, whilst being very useful to power the Contensis in-built search, is also then used later to power the search on your website, albeit trimmed down to just the relevant versions and types. You wouldn't, for example, be interested in seeing the content of a stylesheet in your search results!