We use Search Boost for an external website. The site have heavy traffic, about 5000 users per day.

We index everything!  All web pages and about 700 documents that include all Office documents: Word, Excel and .ppt.  We also index .pdf.

This is a great question.  One of the reasons we purchased DNN Professional Edition was for the search. As it turns out that search module was purchased by DNN from a 3^rd party.  Simply said, for indexing of documents, it doesn’t work.  DNN Community Edition doesn’t index files at all.  Regardless of the version DNN search is inadequate for any portal that needs a powerful search engine.  People have come to expect “Google” like search capability.  Both DNN search modules are not even close.

Search Boost does a great job of indexing both web pages and documents flawlessly.

All features are used.  One extremely useful feature was that  we have set up file directories with three levels of permission: public, client only and client only premium.  Using DNN role security we can limit access to these directories.  The filter capability and ability to respect security that Search Boost uses, allows us to index content, but restrict access to the file.

For an example, go to http://www.devsd.com  Type Premium in the search.  You should see filtered content.  Click on premium and try to access the file.  It requires authentication to access.  Once authenticated, if you don’t have the proper role the document won’t upload.

Another great feature is the ability to custom tag files.  We use this extensively as you can see when you search on www.devsd.com.

Closing…