Corey Roth [MVP]

Today’s post is just a quick tip on something you might want to consider after migrating to SharePoint 2010.  The Search Center site template differs a bit from what used to be there with SharePoint 2007.  New web parts exists for things like refinement and people search.  Sure you can always add these existing web parts to your existing search center, but I find it’s really just easier to delete the site and recreate it with the new template.  This is especially the case if you are adding FAST Search for SharePoint.  If you stick with your old site, you won’t have these new features unless you add them yourself. 

The caveat to add to this is that if you have done extensive customizations to your existing search center, you will need to redo these customizations.  There is a chance that your existing customizations might not even work any way.  This includes changes such as the columns in the result set or modifying the XSLT of the CoreResultsWebPart.  Anyhow, if you do a migration and you find that your search center doesn’t have all the new features you have heard about, create a new one.  Note, you can always create a new search center on a different URL and then change your site collection’s search center URL from the Search Settings page.