Creating a Content Source and More for Searching MCMS with SharePoint

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Last week, we began preparing our MCMS-using website for content indexing so that it could be searched with SharePoint. This week, we continue the work; among other topics, we discuss building our own search controls. This article is excerpted from chapter five of the book Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development, written by Lim Mei Ying et al. (PACKT, 2005; ISBN: 1904811531).

Creating a Content Source Manually

Another option is to manually create the content source in SharePoint rather than allowing the SearchSetup.exe utility to create it for us. We'll walk you though these steps so you will have an understanding of what's involved in creating a content source and source group in a SharePoint portal.

Although we're explaining how to create a content source both with the SearchSetup.exe utility and manually using the same content source names, you must choose only one method as it is not possible to create two content sources with the same name.

Let's start by creating an index of our Tropical Green website in our SharePoint portal:

Refer to Appendix A for a walkthrough of the steps in creating a portal.

1. Start the SharePoint Central Administration by pointing to Start | All Programs | SharePoint Portal Server | SharePoint Central Administration.
   
2. Click List and manage portal site under the Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration section. 
   
3. The Manage Portal Sites page contains a list of all portals in the SharePoint farm. Drag your mouse cursor over the right-hand side of the list and click the drop-down arrow that appears when the mouse cursor is over a portal and select Manage Portal Site Properties (as seen in the image below):
   
   
   
4. Under the section Search Settings and Indexed Content, click the Configure search and indexing link.
   
   The following instructions assume you have not enabled SharePoint's advanced search administration mode. The main difference between basic and advanced mode is advanced mode allows you to work directly with content indexes. Basic mode creates content indexes when you create a content source. In our example, basic mode is adequate for our needs.
   
   Now we will create the content source.
   
5. Under the General Content Settings and Indexing Status section, click the link Add content source.
   
6. On the Add Content Source page, select Web page or Web site and click Next.
   
   
   
7. After selecting that you want to create an external website index, enter the following information on the Add Content Source: Web page or Web site page. Once you have filled out the form, click Finish.

Field	Value
Address:	http://www.tropicalgreen.net/TropicalGreen/
Description:	Tropical Green web site
Crawl Configuration	This site follow links to all pages on this site
Participate in adaptive updates	Checked

If you intend to use the manually-created content source with the MCMS Connector controls, you need to name the content source "CMSChannels" as this name is hard-coded in the connector controls.

In this example, the virtual server acting as an MCMS Web Entry Point for our Tropical Green website handles requests for http://www.tropicalgreen.net/. The example will still work if you have set up the Tropical Green website on http://localhost/; you'll just need to make the appropriate changes in the steps to point to the correct domain.

8. Once you click Finish in the previous step, SharePoint will create the content source and present you with a confirmation page. At the bottom of the Created Web page or Web site Content Source, in the Start Update section, check the Start full update option and click OK. This will trigger the gatherer to start building an index of the Tropical Green website.

Once you have created a content source manually, follow the instructions under the section Creating a New Search Scope above to create a new source group using the settings in the following table:

Field	Value
Name:	TropicalGreen.net
Topics and Areas:	Include no topic or area in this scope
Content Source Groups:	Limit the scope to the following groups of content sources:
	Tropical Green web site

Next: Search Rights for the MCMS Application Pool Account >>
 

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