How to Use

This page describes the basic usage of Fess. If you haven’t installed Fess yet, please refer to Installation Guide or Quick Start Guide.

Note

To search with Fess, you must first configure and run a crawl to build the index. Immediately after installation, search results will return 0 results. For crawl configuration, refer to Administration Screen (For Administrators).

About Fess UI

Fess provides the following UIs:

• Search and search results UI via browser (for general users)

• Administration UI via browser (for administrators)

Search Screen (For General Users)

Accessing the Search Screen

This is the UI for general users to search documents that have been crawled by Fess.

Access http://localhost:8080/ and you will see a search input field and search button.

Basic Search

Enter a search term and click the search button to display search results.

Search results display the following information:

• Title

• URL

• Excerpt from the body (search keywords are highlighted)

• Last updated date

• File size (for documents)

Advanced Search

AND Search

Enter multiple keywords separated by spaces to search for documents containing all keywords.

Example: Fess search → Documents containing both “Fess” and “search”

OR Search

Enter OR between keywords to search for documents containing either keyword.

Example: Fess OR Elasticsearch → Documents containing “Fess” or “Elasticsearch”

NOT Search

Put - before a keyword to exclude documents containing that keyword.

Example: Fess -Elasticsearch → Documents containing “Fess” but not “Elasticsearch”

Phrase Search

Enclose keywords in "" to search for an exact phrase match.

Example: "full-text search" → Documents containing the exact phrase “full-text search”

Search Options

The following options are available on the search screen:

• Label Search: Search only documents with specific labels

• Date Range: Search only documents updated within a specific period

• File Type: Search only specific file types (PDF, Word, etc.)

Administration Screen (For Administrators)

Accessing the Administration Screen

This is the UI for administrators to manage Fess.

Access http://localhost:8080/admin/ and you will see a login screen.

Default administrator account:

• Username: admin

• Password: admin

Warning

Important Security Note

Be sure to change the default password. Especially in production environments, we strongly recommend changing the password immediately after the first login. For instructions on changing the password, refer to User.

Note

The administration UI does not support Responsive Web Design. We recommend accessing from a PC browser.

Main Administration Features

After logging in, you can access the following configuration and management features:

Crawler Settings

• Web Crawl Settings

• File System Crawl Settings

• Data Store Crawl Settings

System Settings

• General Settings (timezone, mail settings, etc.)

• User and Role Management

• Scheduler Settings

• Design Settings

Search Settings

• Label Management

• Keyword Relevance Adjustment

• Synonym and Dictionary Management

For detailed administration instructions, please refer to the User Guide.

Next Steps

After understanding the basic usage, you can refer to the following documents to learn more:

• Fess Administrator Guide — Details on crawl settings and search settings

• Fess API Guide — Integration using the REST API

• Open Source Full-Text Search Server - Fess Development Guide — Customization and extension development