You must add your account credentials when setting up the extension for the first time. The extension will then automatically add all the indices your account requires. You can check which indices have been created from Algolia’s dashboard.
Sorting
By default, the extension creates three replicas for each product index. These replicas are directly related to the sorting configuration in the InstantSearch section.
Adding or removing Sorts will directly affect the number of created replicas and the number of records created.
Indices
Algolia’s dashboard provides insight into how the Magento extension uses indices.
Indices created by the extension depend on how Magento configures indices for products, categories, and additional sections. The index name is influenced by the index name prefix defined in the Magento configuration.
If you use the extension in production, you probably want to use it in an acceptance/staging or development environment. Defining meaningful prefixes to identify instantly “which index belongs to which environment” is good practice, resulting in indices like prod_magento, staging_magento, and dev_magento.
The first step to successful indexing is optimising your Magento configuration. This way, it’s easier to anticipate the number of indices created. If the number of indices is incorrect, something may be wrong with your Magento configuration.
Incorrect configuration
The following are examples of Magento configurations that can lead to an unexpected number of indices.
Different configuration on store view or website level
Magento allows users to define a default configuration and a configuration for a specific store view or website. You can configure some extension settings this way too.
For example, you can have different sort options on two websites in the same Magento instant and thus creating a different number of indices for these two websites. Since Magento only displays the default configuration when landing on the settings page, this manual configuration is easy to overlook, especially with more than one administrator.
If an unexpected number of indices is created, ensure no unwanted configuration has been set by switching from the default settings to a store view or a website-specific configuration.
All stores configuration
The extension adheres to Magento’s list of websites, stores, and views. Find these by going to Stores > Settings > All Stores.
If you have a multilingual webshop that uses the extension, every language needs its own indices, and the total number of indices can significantly increase because of this.
Customer group configuration
By default, Magento creates a set of four customer groups: General, Not logged in, Retailer, and Wholesale. Third-party extensions can create their own customer groups in the Magento installation, sometimes even hundreds of them.
The extension allows you to manage customer groups in the advanced section of the configuration.
Be careful when enabling this feature: every customer group will create new replica indices for every sort-by-price option, per store, thereby multiplying the amount of records in Algolia. If a third-party extension creates hundreds of customer groups, Algolia’s extension will create hundreds more indices per store view.