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Search Function

Well, the search function is kinda shit...maybe you oughta get it powered by Google or something. Also, this other forums where I post at have very decent search functions. Knn, who is the Admin is a nice guy and I guess he'll have no problem helping you guys out.

www.matrix-explained.com/php
www.in-my-opinion.org

And it has been broken for pretty much all day long today...

lol those forums you posted have what... a few thousand posts? you realize TA has MILLIONS of posts right?

you can search google to find ta posts. just search whatever you want and add in tranceaddict at the end.

Yes, it's well established that TA's search function is absolute shit - It's easily the worst search engine I have ever used, and rarely functions for any good.

Case in point: I just spent 5 minutes trying to search for "Kosmas" in the title of posts made over the last 3 months, year, 2005, etc. No results, ever.

There's a thread less than a week old with Kosmas Epsilon in the title in CD Review NR Discussion. Clearly something is fucked.

Edit: Heh, the word "Kosmas" seems to return no results no matter what the search criteria are...

How in gods name can it be this hard to make a search engine work????

I sometimes get the "the word you're looking for is less than 4 letters"-message although the expression I'm looking for has got 6 letters or more.......

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RJT Case in point: I just spent 5 minutes trying to search for "Kosmas" in the title of posts made over the last 3 months, year, 2005, etc. No results, ever.

Search for items including these words: kosmas
Search Options:Search Titles Only
Search for posts from: 2005 only

= Result



If do another search for the past 2 weeks you'll see the other thread you mentioned.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RJT Yes, it's well established that TA's search function is absolute shit - It's easily the worst search engine I have ever used, and rarely functions for any good.

Strong words there. Well established? How exactly? The search on TA outperforms any vbulletin installation out there with this many posts - however, it's important to note that search scalability has long been an issue with vB and admins of larger forums either archive posts after a year or limit searches only to registered users (due to the massive load (I/O heavy) a search requires). TA Search is custom - you will be very hard pressed to find a 'Search all posts by user' or 'search within this thread' that is as fast on another vb forum with over 6 million posts.

The search is actually very powerful - it is a boolean search - and you have tons of options - searching by 'exact phrase',excluding posts if certain words are in the body/title - 'optionally containing these words' meaning to add a certain weighting to search results so posts/threads containing those words are given a higher rank when the query goes through.

I'll cut/paste some examples from the mysql page of what boolean search can do - ignore the + and - below since the boxes on TA search automatically put these in after you submit your search


* '+apple +juice'
Find rows that contain both words.

* '+apple macintosh'
Find rows that contain the word �apple�, but rank rows higher if they also contain �macintosh�.

* '+apple -macintosh'
Find rows that contain the word �apple� but not �macintosh�.

* '+apple ~macintosh'
Find rows that contain the word �apple�, but if the row also contains the word �macintosh�, rate it lower than if row does not. This is �softer� than a search for '+apple -macintosh', for which the presence of �macintosh� causes the row not to be returned at all.

* 'apple*'

Find rows that contain words such as �apple�, �apples�, �applesauce�, or �applet�.

* '"some words"'

Find rows that contain the exact phrase �some words� (for example, rows that contain �some words of wisdom� but not �some noise words�).

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RJT There's a thread less than a week old with Kosmas Epsilon in the title in CD Review NR Discussion. Clearly something is fucked.

Yes, it is. Searches relative to the current date appear to have broke yesterday - I blame the auto-update of perl which messed up the mysql library which in turn broke the nightly creation of the search databases for (1 week/2 weeks/1 month/3 months/6 months/a year ago)

quote:

install_driver(mysql) failed: Can't load '/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so' for module DBD::mysql: libmysqlclient.so.10: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/DynaLoader.pm line 229. at (eval 2) line 3 Compilation failed in require at (eval 2) line 3. Perhaps a required shared library or dll isn't installed where expected at /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqlhotcopy line 178

I just fixed it now - all is back to normal.

quote:

Originally posted by Salegon I sometimes get the "the word you're looking for is less than 4 letters"-message although the expression I'm looking for has got 6 letters or more.......

Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

** Note: Minimum search word length = 4 letters **

I guess that could be worded better - but - the 'Note' is there as a reminder that words under 4 letters in length will not come up in searches - it is simply too intensive to have search enabled for words that small.

swamper, I love your search function

People seem to forget that you've put time out of your day to create the search, and maintain it. And when one says "The search is blah blah blah", they are crapping on your heart, man! Don't take that!

I know you try hard!

quote:

Originally posted by Swamper Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms. ** Note: Minimum search word length = 4 letters ** I guess that could be worded better - but - the 'Note' is there as a reminder that words under 4 letters in length will not come up in searches - it is simply too intensive to have search enabled for words that small.

well, yes I know but the thing is this message also occasionally(In my case very often) appears when searching for 5+ -letter words...

quote:

Originally posted by Salegon well, yes I know but the thing is this message also occasionally(In my case very often) appears when searching for 5+ -letter words...

You will always have it appear if your search turns up no results.

This is the primary message:
Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

This is the appendum meant as a reminder:
** Note: Minimum search word length = 4 letters **

It seems I should just remove the last line because people are confused by it.

swamp, you rock.



lol @ "how hard can it be to make a search function"

unappreciation at its finest

quote:

[b]Originally posted by StanVoid lol @ "how hard can it be to make a search function" unappreciation at its finest

I'm currently working on the vbulletin 3 upgrade and search is being a big pain in the ass.... If I can have it as functional as the way it is now and have it be just as fast I'll be very happy.. The 'straight out of the box' search that comes with it is slow - which is why it's almost a necessity to separate things into dates/years so you are searching a smaller pool of posts.

quote:

Originally posted by Swamper I'm currently working on the vbulletin 3 upgrade and search is being a big pain in the ass.... If I can have it as functional as the way it is now and have it be just as fast I'll be very happy.. The 'straight out of the box' search that comes with it is slow - which is why it's almost a necessity to separate things into dates/years so you are searching a smaller pool of posts.

I don't know anything about forum building so forgive my ignorance, but can't you copy the code which makes up the current search engine and paste it into the new version or something along those lines.

I'd like to bring this topic up again. Just wondering if you would consider reevaluating the search function now that vBulletin 3.6 is out Swamper?

How it is presently, I find the search very often returns no results when I know it should.. eg. I search for "JP-8080" in titles only, in the Australian forums, from posts from 6 months ago, 3 months ago, 1 month ago - no hits. However, when I select '2 weeks ago' or '1 week ago' I get a hit for "Roland", but NOT for "JP-8080" (thread im targeting is titled "[FS] Roland JP-8080", from <1 week ago in the Australian forums).

Another example: searching '+Presonus +Firebox' (using boolean search terms, as you suggested), limiting my search to posts from '3 months ago', '6 months ago' or 'a year ago' (and newer), searching in titles only, and searching in the producers forum, returns no hits, even though there is clearly a thread that should be returned, however I CAN get the thread I'm looking for, but only if I search for posts from '2 weeks ago' or '1 week ago' and newer.

Surely this is erroneous behaviour? If the thread is picked up with the '2 weeks and newer' search, shouldn't the '3 months and newer' search also find it?
This is just one example of erratic search behaviour this forum displays. Searches work fine for me on all other forums..

Swamper, I love your work mate but perhaps this issue deserves some attention? It makes these otherwise awesome forums really difficult to navigate sometimes


In response to the person who said that searches on this forum can't be compared to others due to the number of posts ("1 million+ posts"), there are plenty of forums running vBulletin who's searches work excellently and also have a huge number of posts -- vBulletins own forums for example - http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php the Overclockers Australia forums have over 5 million posts, all fully searchable (and fast too) -- http://forums.overclockers.com.au/

..the HardOCP forums again have over 4 million posts, http://www.hardforum.com/, again fully searchable etc. Both these sites use the inbuilt vBulletin 3.6.4 search engine, straight out of the box. Perhaps a flood control limiter (can only search every minute or so) would be a better way to limit bandwidth/server usage?

Thanks for your time and consideration oh Swampy one

Thanks for reminding me of something.

Basically, there are a couple of corrupt threads on TA and I need to take the whole site down for a few hours and re-do the indicies in order to fix it. I completely forgot about how this affects search -- if you posted a new thread 2 weeks ago and search for it - you'll find it -- if you choose '1 month ago' then once it hits the corrupt thread(s) it dies and doesn't return anything else.

I'll fix that this weekend.

Also, regarding that other site -- they limit the number of results they return to 5000 - TA returns everything. It's not too much of a performance hit to do that.

quote:

Originally posted by Swamper Basically, there are a couple of corrupt threads on TA and I need to take the whole site down for a few hours and re-do the indicies in order to fix it. I completely forgot about how this affects search -- if you posted a new thread 2 weeks ago and search for it - you'll find it -- if you choose '1 month ago' then once it hits the corrupt thread(s) it dies and doesn't return anything else.

i've noticed a problem recently.. the 'one year ago' option seems to barely return anything from less than a year ago, and in most cases gives me older stuff. this is what i got trying to search for all thread titles in MD with 'contest' in them using the 'one year ago (and newer)' option:



it dates back to june on page 2 is this at all related to the problem you described?

Fixed.

there's one thing i noticed about the search function a few months back (example follows below):

if you do a search on "titles only" and the thread title has been altered by a mod (or user? don't know if this makes any difference) the search seems not to find it.

example: i was once searching for this thread:

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...?threadid=84817

the thread title clearly contains the word "auto" and is dated from 2003 (and also contains posts up to july 2007 as of now) but if i do a search on the german subforum for the word "auto" in the thread title it won't return that thread (whatever time i choose, whether it's "2003 only" or any other).

i suppose that this behaviour is related to the fact that the original title of the thread once was "Was f�r ne Karre fahrt ihr? Schon nen Unfall gehabt?" (the first post still contains this title) since i can find it using the keyword "karre" in "2003 only".

i don't have a precise idea how the data for the ta search is stored, but i think it should be possible to fix this some way. even if not, this could still be of help to others (if i'm correct).

quote:

Originally posted by dj_macgyver if you do a search on "titles only" and the thread title has been altered by a mod (or user? don't know if this makes any difference) the search seems not to find it.

The problem here is that it is assumed that posts from a certain year will rarely ever have their titles/content edited. The search database for 2003 was created in Nov 2005 -- I haven't updated it since. However, I'll see about changing it to update once a month just to weed out old titles/deleted threads/posts/etc. Never thought of that.

Thanks.

Search is working MUCH better now mate, thanks heaps!!

don't know what it is, but since nov 17th I only get search results until that date.

whatever I search for & whatever timefame I only get results until nov 17th.

is it only me ?

quote:

Originally posted by trancekid is it only me ?

My fault - try again in an hour.

(somehow the nightly update was suspended)

when do you plan to implement TA v2.0 search engine ?

seems to be getting better Swamper.

again, only results until december 10th....

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