Joomla 2.5 disable and remove Smart Search

3
votes

I am maintaining a Joomla 2.5 based magazine website with 3-4 new, long articles every day. Smart Search was enabled by default and now I've got a few "finder" tables full of indexed phrases and therms.

I wonder if there are any disadvantages if I'd:

  • Disable the Smart Search plugin
  • Remove these 'finder' tables completely

Aha, we're using a Search field, which works fine, but I'm not sure what's going to happen if I disable the plugin and remove these tables. Will it then search for phrases in content Joomla tables or simply break w/o missing 'finder' tables

Has anyone tried this before?

3
joomlajoomla2.5

3 Answers

4
votes

I really doubt about having Smart Search enabled by default. Smart Search is one of the coolest (and sometimes unknown) features in J2.5. But it's not for all websites. You just need to test it!

Here is what you can do:

  • You can certainly disable the Smart Search plugin, IF you are not using Smart Search (or you think you don't need it). The old search will still be there to use.

  • I would strongly advice against deleting tables (just empty their content if you really want; can be done from the Smart Search Management GUI); you may / will have problems later when you update Joomla.

Most important, don't do this kind of stuff on your live server. Nowdays it's almost as easy as you can get to run Joomla! on a XAMPP or WAMP intalation where you can test everything.

2
votes

Smart search is a much more powerful search than the old search since it indexes your content and returns it in a sensible order and lets you do filtering and maps.

If you really want to disable it you would disable the finder content plugin. Then you can clear the table in the smart search manager (I think it says purge index or something like that). I wouldn't uninstall because you may want to go back.

1
votes

I was thinking to delete or empty the FINDER table. But the best solution for big websites is to

  • Disable the CONTENT SEARCH plugin and
  • Use the classic search module.

My user experience remained the same.