Speeding Up Search on Large Evolution CMS Sites

AjaxSearch may feel acceptable on a small site, but on a project with thousands of resources it can quickly become unusable. The legacy case here involved a site with more than 5,000 resources where search requests took so long they often ended in a 404 or timeout.

The Expensive Default

The problem turned out to be the default search configuration:

$dcfg['whereSearch'] = 'content|tv';

That instructs AjaxSearch to search broadly, including TV data. On a larger site, that can become far too expensive.

The Working Fix

The successful adjustment was to narrow the searchable fields and list the required TVs explicitly:

$dcfg['whereSearch'] = 'content:pagetitle,content';
$dcfg['withTvs'] = 'sku';

Why This Helps

• whereSearch stops scanning every TV field
• the main content search stays focused on useful text fields
• only the truly needed TVs are joined through withTvs

Practical Takeaway

If search performance collapses on a large Evolution site, start by auditing whereSearch. Broad TV scanning is convenient when prototyping, but it is rarely the right production setting for a large catalog or content archive.