Can I de-activate the SPIP search engine?

By default in SPIP, the public search engine is active.
An administrator can decide to de-activate it.

If you feel that you do not require the search engine or that the indexation task is using up too much resource on your server, it can be de-activated.

To do so:

 Click on the "Configuration" icon

 Click on the "Advanced functions" tab

 In the box "Integrated search engine", select "Do not use the engine"

 Click Submit

You can now see that the search field is no longer available on the public site.

Can I extent the search to syndicated content?

When you are using the SPIP integrated search engine, by default the search applies to the titles and articles descriptions of the syndicated content that is available on your SPIP site.
Indeed, those titles and descriptions are stored in your database after the RSS flux has been downloaded.

But you can also extend the search to the entire text of the referenced sites: if you reference a site, SPIP will then carry out the search in the text of the site itself, which gives much more comprehensive results.

Still, this method forces SPIP to regulary visit referenced sites, which can cause your own site performance to slow down a little.

To activate this functionality:

 Click on the "Configuration" icon

 In the box "Sites syndication", select "Extend the search to the content of referenced sites"

 Click Submit

Summary

In this lesson you have learnt how the SPIP search engine works ; you now know the concepts of indexation and weighting.

You have also learnt how to configure the search engine to get the best use out of it.