Using Websolr.com

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If you are a subscriber to Heroku, then you do not need these instructions. Please visit the appropriate documentation for more details: Heroku users

Step 1: Sign up at Websolr.com

The first step is to sign up for an account at Websolr. The sign up process starts with providing your email and agreeing to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy:

A verification email will be sent to the email you provided. This should only take a few minutes at most. If you do not receive an email, check your spam folders. If you still can not find it, please send an email to [e-mail].

Step 2: Verify Your Email and Create Your Account

Open the verification email and click on the confirmation link to confirm your email address:

This will take you to a form where you can fill in the rest of your information:

This creates an account for your organization, and an administrator for that account. Additional users with specific roles can be added later.

The next step is a form to create your Solr index.

Step 3: Create Your Solr Index

The form for creating an index has a number of different fields and options:

To create your index, the minimum steps are:

1. Give the index a meaningful name
2. Select a geographic region. This should ideally be located as close as possible to your application's servers to minimize lag.
3. Select an available Solr configuration. Websolr provides a set of ready-made configurations for the most common applications.

It is possible to edit and add configurations to Websolr. That is covered in another tutorial. For the purposes of this guide, the user has simply selected a very basic configuration.

When you have configured the new index to your satisfaction, click on "Create Index". The index will be created automatically. By default, the index is created on a free plan. If you want to use the index for production purposes, it will need to be upgraded to a paid plan.

After creating the index, you will be redirected to its dashboard:

The dashboard and features are covered in depth in another article.

A very important piece of information to note is the URL; this is a special, private URL to your Solr index. You can verify that your Solr index is up and running by opening the URL in a browser or terminal and appending /select to the end. For example:

# The wt=json and indent=true parameters are not required, but enhance readability:
curl -s "https://us-east-1.websolr.com/solr/a1b2c3d4e5/select?wt=json&indent=true"

{
   "responseHeader":{
     "status":0,
     "QTime":0},
   "response":{"numFound":0,"start":0,"docs":[]
   }
}

The URL (without the "/select" endpoint) is what your application will need to connect to Solr.

Congratulations! You are now up and running with Websolr!

Updating Your Plan

The resources available to a Solr index are based on its payment plan. Features and resources can be added or removed by changing the plan associated to the index.

To change the plan, log in to Websolr and navigate to the index's dashboard. One of the options listed is "Manage." Click on this tab:

The Manage tab opens up a page that will allow you to pick a new plan:

This page shows the current index plan, and the available upgrades. There are three tiers:

• Standard. Indices on the Standard tier are provisioned on shared hardware. This allows Websolr to offer very good economies of scale and high performance at a low price point. These plans correspondingly have document limits and lower allowances for data and request volumes.
• Business.The Business tier is for production applications demanding peak performance. Indices on this tier are provisioned on single-tenant configurations. These are more expensive, but have no document limits and much larger allowances for data and request volumes.
• Enterprise. The Enterprise tier is for large scale applications with very particular needs. These are single tenant configurations that are custom built for the user. Pricing varies based on needs. As a result, the Enterprise tier is not directly available through this menu. Users looking for pricing will need to reach out to [e-mail] with a list of specifications and requirements.

There are other benefits and features available to each tier. These are described on the Websolr Plans page.

To change the index's plan, click on the tier you'd like, and select a capacity within that tier.

If you are attempting to upgrade to a paid resource, you will need to have a credit card added to your account. If no credit card has been added to your account, the Manage page will also include a form for adding payment information:

When you are satisfied with the changes, click on the "Submit" button at the bottom of the form, and the index will be automatically upgraded.

Note: if you are upgrading from a free or Standard tier plan to the Business tier, there will be a slight delay because the private servers will need to be deployed and configured and your data migrated over. The length of this delay will vary, but it will not affect traffic to your index. If you have questions or concerns, please email [e-mail] and let us know.

Destroying Your Index

When you no longer need an index, it can be destroyed in a few simple steps. Note that Websolr bills by index, not by activity. Stopping traffic to an index will not prevent it from being invoiced each month.

Also note that destroying an index will also destroy all of its data. Please use caution before removing an index.

To destroy an index, log in to Websolr and navigate to the index's dashboard and click on the tab at the bottom marked "Deprovision":

The Deprovision menu consists of a single form field. You will need to enter your password to confirm that the index should be destroyed:

Once your password has been entered correctly, the "Deprovision" button will be made available:

Click this button to permanently destroy the index.