Adding a searchable newsletter archive to my website?

[hebihebi]

I've been googling this but haven't had any luck in finding what I want.

I belong to a club and run the club's website. We would like to add all the past newsletters to the website but I want to make it a searchable archive kind of thing. So if you are looking for an article someone wrote on making jam you can just type jam into a search box and hopefully the article will pop up.

Has anyone done anything like this? I see it on websites all the time so it must be possible but I can't seem to find how to do it.

Depends on how they are formatted, text, pdf, or html

Google will index PDFs acrobatusers.com/tutorials/make-your-pdfs-work-well-google-and-other-search-engines.

So you could just upload the news letters as PDF let google index them and then add a google search firm on you site - how will derpend on how the site is built

Thank you so much for replying!

The newsletters are pdf form but we wish to keep them private, for members only. We have a search box in our website but it doesn't search the pdfs.

I wondered if there is a search box that I can add that will search our PDFs but not make them publicly available. Or if we can store our PDFs on another website that has a PDF search function that we can make private and just link to it.

I feel like it must be possible somehow but I just can't figure it out.

It is possible but it's going to more complex to index a private members only area. Google doesn't like to index private areas as they are often used for paid for content.

There is some information here

You didn't say how your site works - there may be a plugin such as this one but it costs $49/yr.

Thank you so much. You've given me a lot to think about. Our website uses a membership management software. They have a search box but it doesn't search the files. I have a small budget so I will see if the search box you linked to seems viable or not. I really appreciate your help!