Which type of CMS performs best in site search?

Need to choose CMS for technical support site

[dennis]

Hi there,

First post! :) I've done some searching on this while there's some related content, nothing definitive exists.

I need to take the large support section (~200pgs) of a technical site and break it off into its own subdomain.

There are many many requirements, but to cut a long story short...

Which CMS have you seen/found to have the best native search feature?

or failing that, which CMS have you found to play best with Google-powered search?

I understand the merits of well categorized content and well designed navigation, but I'd really like to have a nice big search box on the homepage that actually brings back relevant pages.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Dennis

[ergophobe]

Welcome Dennis!

How much control of the server do you have? What's your budget?

For high-demand tasks, folks are going to Sphinx or Solr search, which can be integrated into several CMS. Just to give an idea, I searched on four CMS and only Joomla didn't have a Solr module yet:

[wordpress.org...]
[drupal.org...]
[typo3-solr.com...]

That said, you'll need a dedicated server just for search or you'll have to farm it out ($350/year for a 1000-2000 page site using Acquia search for example).

Other than that, the only one I've used a lot is Drupal search. Generally, I would say it is not as good as a custom Google search engine for your site. It gives different results, but I would say generally a bit worse. That's been my experience with most built-in search, but I can't say I've had a ton of experience.

[dennis]

Thanks for the reply ergophobe. Budget and server access is not an issue. I'm working for a large company with an open source ethos, but that will farm stuff out if necessary. I have a lot of resources available. Just want to make sure I'm launching into the right solution.

Thanks for your input.

[ergophobe]

Well, that gives you some pretty simple options then. Good luck!