Site search with protected content

September 12, 2013 6:27 AM

We want users to be able to search our website for content, but not for them to be able to view search results and content that their usergroup doesn't have access to. We are changing our website around a bit, and there will be sections of the site that will be available to the general public and then there will be several password-protected sections for different groups (each usergroup has access to a different section). Each usergroup should only see the search results that are related to their access area. What approaches are there for this kind of setup? I don't think Google Site Search is the solution for this, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?
posted by chirico to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I think you could get that set up working with Solr, but you'll need root access to the site and some technical know how to get it working.
posted by COD at 6:49 AM on September 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure if ElasticSearch does that, but it may be worth checking into because it's really fast. There are hosted solutions available such as Qbox.io. I'm not a programmer, but I'm wondering if maybe just using different indexes for the public and and user group areas would be a solution. Another site search tool I've come across is Atomz but it displays ads.
posted by Dansaman at 9:56 AM on September 12, 2013

How much content is on your website? how is it stored and managed?
posted by Good Brain at 10:26 AM on September 12, 2013

Response by poster: We have about 150 pages of content. It is a Joomla site. Thanks for the suggestions.
posted by chirico at 12:23 PM on September 12, 2013

Assuming you want to stay with Joomla, I don't have any helpful info for you, but if you're considering other content management systems, Drupal does this easily and well.
posted by kristi at 11:53 AM on September 14, 2013