Creating a Search Center - SharePoint 2013

This post is a walk through to create a search center in SharePoint 2013

Site creation Steps


In central admin go to Application Management and select Create site collections. Note that the search center is the top level site of a site collection.

In the Create Site Collection page:

1. Select the web application
2. Type in the Title & description
3. Specify the URL for the search center
4. In the template selection, click on the Enterprise tab

If you are using SharePoint foundation 2013, select Basic Center template else
If you are using SharePoint Server 2013, select Enterprise Search Center template

Specify the primary and secondary administrators


Specify the primary and secondary administrators
In the quota template, select "No Quota" (The search center site is not meant to be a data repository, hence no quota is needed)
Then Click “OK”

The site is created !!


Permissions

In order to grant permissions for the users navigate to the search center site, and click on the Settings gear on the top right hand corner of the site. Select "Shared with…"

In the shared with dialog click on "Invite people link"
When the "Share" dialog appears specify "NT Authority\authenticated users" under "Invite People to Read"
Set the permission level give "Read" access

Update My Site Settings

Go to the My site settings page (Navigation: Central Admin > Manage Service Applications > User Profile Service Application > Setup My Sites). 

In the preferred search center section provide the URL for the created search center. This will allow searches carried out from my site profile page to use the created search center.