Silverstripe Search customer guides

Getting started

This is a guide for understanding what is available in Silverstripe Search and where to start to get it onto your site.

Silverstripe Search is managed search software and infrastructure that provides advanced search capability for Silverstripe CMS websites. This means you don’t need to figure out how to run a server, look after updates and manage related security issues but instead get on with helping your users discover content quickly and easily.

Looking for the Developer’s guide?

If you’re thinking “show me the code already” you might want to head over to the Developer’s guide

Silverstripe Search provides you search features with advanced Elastic technologies, technical support, 24/7 monitoring, heightened security controls, and implementation SDKs.

Available on the New Zealand Government Marketplace in English and with Te Reo Māori support.

Overview

Silverstripe Search transforms your site’s content into an easily searchable format and provides you with ways to interact with your content. Your content is stored as individual Documents inside a search engine and searching is all about finding those documents.

Engines

An engine is a group of your documents. All documents within an engine must have the same structure which is know as the engine’s schema. This organisation allows Silverstripe Search to process your content into a searchable format.

More information can be found in Engines and Schema.

Your plan will include an engine allowance. For more information about plans, refer to Features.

Documents

A document is a representation of your content stored in Silverstripe Search. When you send a document to an engine, it is processed ready for searching, this is known as indexing. What documents you create depends on your site but a common example of a document is an individual page e.g. “Home Page”, “About Page” etc. To find out more, refer to Documents and Files.

Deciding what is searchable

You will first need to decide what content you would like to make searchable. For example, most sites require their public page content to be searchable but your application may have special requirements. Do you have files like PDFs that you would like to show in search results? Is there a feature on your site that could be powered by a refined search such as a knowledge base? Having a clear scope will help you get the most out of Silverstripe Search.

To get your content into Silverstripe Search you will need a Developer to make some changes to your site. Silverstripe Search is designed to be easily set up on a site running Silverstripe CMS. We provide a Software Development Kit (SDK) to get developers up and running quickly. Find out more in the Developer’s guide.

How to search your content

At its simplest search helps you match a phrase to a document usually via a search input on your site. Silverstripe Search has a few tricks up its sleeve to enhance your users search experience.

Some features are only available on certain Plans. For more detail on what’s available, check out Features

Filtering

You can apply custom filters to your searches to help direct users to the most relevant content. This can be especially useful on structured lists such as catalog pages.

Facets

Facets complement filters by showing users what categories are available in your content and can help them narrow down what is relevant to them, based on various attributes such as categories, tags, dates, etc.

Suggestions

Search suggestions help users find what they’re looking for even if they’ve accidentally misspelled a word or can help them complete their query faster by suggesting common search phrases.

Synonyms

Synonyms can help to make your content more accessible by allowing you to set word equivalence. You can map common acronyms or domain specific language to more commonly used terms to make it easier to search for them.

Mix and match

The above features can be combined to provide powerful features specific to your content. You can explore more on the the Features guide or engage a developer to see what’s possible.

Where to next