Search Multiple Sitefinity Sites

Hello Telerik Tech,

We have an international customer that will have 4 websites under the umbrella of their main site.
They would like to have 4 separate installs & licenses for Sitefinity.

How would this scenario affect the Search/Taxonomy feature? 
Meaning, if you were on Site1 and did a search, could you get results from Site2, Site3 and Site4?

In other words can you link the API of the 4 separate installs of Sitefinity so you could search all sites from one site?

Thanks,

Chuck.

Hi chuck,

We will not support this functionality out of the box. The search will work per instance.

Sincerely yours,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hello Ivan,

Thanks for the quick reply!

I understand your answer.

There seems to be a workaround, I was reading the Sitefinity Users Manual, Chapter 10. Services > Search page 148, and the last paragraph states -

"

All data related to the Indexing Services and Clients is stored in the Sitefinity database. However, the

actual indexed URLs could be stored in a separate database. Currently, we have only one indexing

service, which uses Lucene.net engine. Lucene.net stores its indexes in the

~/App_Data/Search folder.

Hi chuck,

The Lucene segment files are stored in App_Data. We do not keep search results data in the database, so you have to use a common storage, make App_Data network share or use file replication tool.

Best wishes,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hi Ivan,

Thanks for the info.

OK, so the 4 instances could all dump their indexing results in a network shared "App_Data" folder, and the Search page could then pull from that 'one' shared network folder, instead of 4 separate instances of local "App_Data" folders, right?

Would this method just require pointing the Lucene engine to the shared network "App_Data" folder, and setting sharing permissions on the Win 2008 Server?

Also, would there be a way to tell the origins of each indexed item ? i.e.
Result - xxx xxx xxx xx Recieved from Instance1 of Sitefinity
Result - yyy yyy yyy y Recieved from instance2 of Sitefinity
.......
.......

Thanks again for your quick reply!

Regards,
Chuck.

Hello again Ivan,

Can you tell me if perhaps if the client should consider just one license on the server and use it for the 4 sites?  As opposed to 4 separate instances for 4 separates sites on the same server?

Can you distinctly have 4 separate areas in 1 install?, so each of the clients 4 subsidiary businesses could manage totally separately, and not interfere with each others Sitefinity settings ?

What would you recommend, if the "Search Service" / and getting back results for all for subsidiaries in one query was of top importance?  1 instance 4 sites 1 server     or     4 instances 4 sites 1 server ?

Regards,
Chuck.

Hello chuck,

Can you tell me if perhaps if the client should consider just one license on the server and use it for the 4 sites?  As opposed to 4 separate instances for 4 separates sites on the same server?

The licensing and pricing will be announced after the Release Candidate, so I believe that this will be the time when you should decide how many license you should purchase.

Can you distinctly have 4 separate areas in 1 install?, so each of the clients 4 subsidiary businesses could manage totally separately, and not interfere with each others Sitefinity settings ?

You will be able to achieve this using permissions or user/roles policy

What would you recommend, if the "Search Service" / and getting back results for all for subsidiaries in one query was of top importance?  1 instance 4 sites 1 server     or     4 instances 4 sites 1 server

The easiest way to achieve your goal is using 1 instance of Sitefinity, otherwise you will need to extend the search index provider.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hello Ivan,

I did have one question unanswered, can you please advise - 

If we did use 4 instances of Sitefinity for 4 subsites on 1 server  (all with the same base domain name) -

The 4 instances could all dump their indexing results in a network shared "App_Data" folder, and the Search page could then pull from that 'one' shared network folder, instead of 4 separate instances of local "App_Data" folders, right?

Would this method just require pointing the Lucene engine to the shared network "App_Data" folder, and setting sharing permissions on the Win 2008 Server?

Also, would there be a way to tell the origins of each indexed item ? i.e.
Result - xxx xxx xxx xx Recieved from Instance1 of Sitefinity
Result - yyy yyy yyy y Recieved from instance2 of Sitefinity


Also, can Sitefinity index natively multiple URLS?  For instance, if we had
www.mainsite.com/area1,
www.mainsite.com/area2,
www.mainsite.com/area3,
www.mainsite.com/area4 
Could Sitefinity Lucene engine index multiples such as the Karamasoft ASP.net search Engine does?

We will definitely be using the same base url www.mainsite.com .

Thanks for your quick reply, trying to base our purchasing decision on some of these factors.

Brgds,
Chuck.

Hello chuck,

Rado, has sent a reply to you in this thread.

Sincerely yours,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team