Log-in Issue HTTP Auth Open Search Server

Hi!
Open Search Server (OSS) is a great search tool for website.
Super powerful and an excellent alternative to WordPress default search.

It works well on my public sites, however I am unable to make it work with my site protected with s2member.

To crawl the site we need to be provided Authentication credentials.
I was naive to think that I could provide OSS with the link mywebsite.com/wp-login.php and my credentials.
This did not work.

Their support staff told me:
“OpenSearchServer do not support Web form authentication for now.
The authentication tab used in the crawler is for apache(htpasswd).”

In another email they say:
“For authenticated webpage’s you can use this plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/http-authentication/
which allows the existing authenticated user as http authenticated one.

And you need to setup the Apache authentication module.
Please follow the below tutorial to set up the Apache authentication.
http://doc.norang.ca/apache-basic-auth.html

So that you can use the Crawler/Authentication in OpenSearchServer to add the exising user authentication.The crawler should work fine with authenticated webpage.

For you information we have installed the plugin and tested with our OpenSearchServer and it worked.”

In a third email they also suggested:
“I also found this plugin which is able to allow a specific IP address:

Restricted Site Access
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/restricted-site-access/

You have to add the IP address of the OpenSearchServer instance.
Once you make that the crawl should work.”

Is there a SIMPLE built-in method with s2member you may recommend?
If not, Do you think any of the above may solve the issue and if you have any preferred solution among them?

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply.

Best regards
Jean

Hi Jean.

Well, you could create a hack that checks if the page is being requested by their crawler (e.g. IP address, user agent), and give it access bypassing the s2Member restrictions.

Hi Cristian,

Thank you for your reply.

Are you talking about Remote Header Authorization as described in Download Option -> Remote Auth / Podcasting?
We are talking giving access to 20,000+ posts.

No, I’m talking about having a must-use plugin hack that checks if it’s the OSS bot and, if so, skip the s2Member restrictions. http://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins