When setting up the Algolia extension for the first time, the account credentials need to be entered. Once these are saved, and the credentials are correct, our extension will instantly create the indices required in your Algolia account. The indices created can be checked by going to the Dashboard.
Sortings
By default, our extension will create 3 replicas for each product index. These replicas are directly related to the sorting configuration in the InstantSearch section.
Modifying these sortings impacts the number of created replicas directly. To learn more about it, have a look at the related FAQ entry.
Indices
It’s extremely useful to keep an eye on our Dashboard. It provides insight into the usage of indices by the Magento extension, and let’s you keep an eye on the amount of indices created.
Indices created through the Magento extension depend on the configuration of the extension inside Magento to configure the indices for product, categories, and additional sections. The index name is influenced by the defined index name prefix in the Magento configuration.
If our extension is used in production, it probably has to be used on an acceptance/staging, or development, environment as well. Defining meaningful prefixes to instantly identify which index belongs to which environment is a very good practice. For example, prod_magento, staging_magento, dev_magento, etc.
The first step to successful indexing is to master the configuration in Magento. This way, it’s easier to anticipate the number of indices that will be created. The indices can be checked in the indices list. If the number of indices is incorrect, it’s probably because something is wrong with the configuration in Magento.
Incorrect configuration
Here are some examples of Magento configurations that can lead to an unexpected amount of indices created.
Different configuration on store view or website level#
Magento allows users to define both default configuration, and a configuration related to a certain store view or website. Some of our extensions’ settings are configurable this way too.
For example, it’s possible to have different sortings on two different websites in the same Magento installation. This will create a different number of indices created for these two websites.
This kind of manual configuration is easy to forget, especially with more than one administrator. Since Magento only displays the default configuration when landing on the settings page, it is easy to overlook.
If an unexpected number of indices is created, please make sure no unwanted configuration was set by switching from the default settings to store view or website specific configuration.
All Stores configuration
Please keep in mind that our extension adheres to the websites, stores, and store views listed in Magento. The list of these can be found by navigating to Stores > Settings > All Stores.
If the webshop using our extension is multilingual, keep in mind every language will need its’ own indices, and the number of indices can greatly 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.
Our extension gives the possibility to manage customer groups, in the advanced section of the configuration. When enabling this feature, please be careful: every customer group will create new indices. If another third-party extension created hundreds of customer groups, hundreds more indices will be created per store view.