Google server forms authentication

Question

I've setup forms authentication in my Google Search Appliance. Is there a way to have the title and a summary come back for protected pages? Currently, since they are all redirected to the login page, all search results are titled as "Login." I'm using asp.net with the .net framework 3.5.

Answer 1

You need to either:

1. Configure the Search Appliance to authenticate against your server.
2. Allow the search engine through to your protected pages.

On some of our client sites we've gone with option 2, partly because of the dynamic nature of the protection (i.e. articles published in the last 30 days are open, but you need a subscription to see the archive) which didn't lend themselves to using web.config settings.

We have a "Base Page" class that inherits from System.Web.UI.Page, and that all our pages inherit from.

In that class, we check a number of things, including the IP address and user agent of the calling client, if these match our search engine, we display a custom page layout that removes things like navigation, header, footer, etc (using a master page), and display some additional metadata that we use for filtering - this way the search engine sees and indexes the entire content.

If these checks fail, then we check to see if the user is authenticated, and if they have a vaild subscription.

If they don't have a valid subscription or aren't authenticated, we display a summary of the page, in place, along with a call to log in or register (using standard ASP.NET controls).

Answer 2

If the title of your pages is something other than login, you probably haven't set it up correctly. The title of the document is what was indexed by the GSA during the crawl. I posted previously some tips to completing the SSO wizard here: http://www.mcplusa.com/blog/2009/02/completing-the-sso-wizard-on-the-google-search-appliance/