Opensolr Basic User Guide
1. Create Your Account
Head to opensolr.com and click Sign Up in the top-right corner. Enter your email and choose a password. You'll receive a confirmation email — click the link to activate your account, then log in.
Once logged in, you'll land on your Dashboard — the central hub for managing everything: indexes, clusters, billing, team members, and API keys.
2. Create Your First Index
From your Dashboard, go to My Indexes and click Add New. You'll be prompted to:
- Select a region — US-East, US-West, EU-Central, EU-West, EU-North, or Asia-Pacific
- Choose a Solr version — Solr 5 through Solr 9 available across regions
- Name your index — give it a meaningful name (e.g.
my_website,product_search) or keep the auto-generated ID
Click Add Index and your index is provisioned in seconds. You'll immediately see your connection details: hostname, port, authentication credentials, and the full Solr URL.
For a detailed visual walkthrough, see Create a New Index — Step by Step.
3. Upload Your Configuration
Click your index name to enter its Index Control Panel, then go to Configuration in the sidebar. Here you can:
- Edit config files live — schema.xml, solrconfig.xml, synonyms, stopwords, and more, directly in the browser
- Upload a config zip — download a ready-made config set for your CMS or upload your own custom schema
For most CMS integrations, you'll download the config set from within the CMS module itself (Search API Solr for Drupal generates one automatically). For custom applications, you can start with the default config and adjust fields as needed.
See Solr Configuration Files Dependency Flow for details on how schema.xml, solrconfig.xml, and other config files work together.
4. Connect Your Application
/solr/INDEX_NAME. Generate and upload the config set. Create an index, select content types, and start indexing.us-east-solr-8-0.opensolr.com), port 443, path /solr/INDEX_NAME, and your auth credentials. Save settings and reindex./update, query via /select. Supports JSON, XML, and CSV.5. Quick API Examples
Once your index is live and configured, you can interact with it directly via HTTP. Replace USER:PASS with your index credentials and CLUSTER.opensolr.com with your cluster hostname.
Search (SELECT)
curl -u USER:PASS "https://CLUSTER.opensolr.com/solr/INDEX_NAME/select?q=laptop&rows=10&wt=json"
Index a Document (UPDATE)
curl -u USER:PASS "https://CLUSTER.opensolr.com/solr/INDEX_NAME/update?commit=true" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '[{"id":"1","title":"My First Document","content":"Hello Solr!"}]'
Delete by ID
curl -u USER:PASS "https://CLUSTER.opensolr.com/solr/INDEX_NAME/update?commit=true" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"delete":{"id":"1"}}'
PHP Example
$url = 'https://CLUSTER.opensolr.com/solr/INDEX_NAME/select?q=laptop&wt=json'; $context = stream_context_create(['http' => [ 'header' => 'Authorization: Basic ' . base64_encode('USER:PASS') ]]); $response = file_get_contents($url, false, $context); $data = json_decode($response, true); print_r($data['response']['docs']);
JavaScript (Fetch)
const response = await fetch( 'https://CLUSTER.opensolr.com/solr/INDEX_NAME/select?q=laptop&wt=json', { headers: { 'Authorization': 'Basic ' + btoa('USER:PASS') } } ); const data = await response.json(); console.log(data.response.docs);
For a complete reference of all search parameters (q, fq, sort, fl, facet, etc.), see Querying the Solr API: Search Parameters Explained.
6. Your Control Panel
For a full overview, see What is the Opensolr Control Panel?
7. Troubleshooting
| Issue | Likely Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Can't connect to Solr | Wrong hostname, port, or credentials | Double-check your Index Control Panel for the correct URL. Use port 443 for HTTPS. |
| No search results | Content not indexed or schema mismatch | Reindex your content. Ensure your schema fields match what your CMS sends. |
| Drupal: "Server could not be reached" | Config set not uploaded or wrong Solr version | Upload the config set generated by Search API Solr. Check Solr version matches. |
| WordPress plugin error | Plugin version incompatibility | Update WPSOLR to the latest version. Verify connection details. |
| Slow queries | Unoptimized index or expensive queries | Run Optimize from Tools, check Query Debugging. |