Search Upgrades and .txt Files

  • Updated

Prior to Ektron 8.50, CMS releases used the Microsoft Indexing Service search provider. Text (.txt) files were created by CMS under the siteroot\assets folder. The Indexing Service would crawl these text files to index information about HTML content, Smart Form content, image metadata, and user information. The format for content was generally ID+locale+extension+.txt , while the user format was User ID.txt (under the assets\users folder).

The first of a new generation of search providers (Microsoft Search Server and FAST) were introduced with Ektron 8.50. Solr was added in Ektron 9.00. The new search providers crawl the database directly. Consequently, the need for the .txt files has been eliminated. 

The .txt files can number into the tens of thousands, and they remain in place during the upgrade process.

You should remove the .txt files from under the assets folder. Additionally, also delete any folders under assets except the assets\0 folder, such as the following folders:

  • assets\bestbets
  • assets\communitygroups
  • assets\users
  • metaconfig.doc (and variants prefixed with numbers)

After deleting the folders and metaconfig files, locate the .txt files, perhaps using the search feature in Windows Explorer.

Important: Before you delete the .txt files, review the list to ensure there are no actual assets that happen to have .txt extensions.