Search function?

[Keven Fox]

The example I'm using is for an older topic, but yet failure.

Now, I'm searching for a topic on speed test where we all posted our results for our internet speed.

I don't know WHAT you're using for search results, but NOTHING was even close.

I found the topic INSTANTLY having to use Google, with "speed test invision".

SO yes I'm a bit put of by your search function.

[AtariAge]

I agree, searching on this forum is very lacking. Searching for multiple terms is pretty much a waste of time. You also cannot search for terms less than four characters, which gets in the way quite often when I'm trying to search for something here. I've also had to resort to Google to find items on this forum. I wish Invision would install Sphinx here to allow for two character searches.

..Al

[.Ian]

Also need the ability to search for two or more words say +speed +test, which as far as I know is not possible - if it is then instructions need to be given as to how to customize the search.

[Mark H.]

Using +speed +test *should* work. If it doesn't, then something broke between releases. I know it worked before.

EDIT: Yeah, something appears to me wrong. I just tried it, and it did a logical OR with the two words, instead of an AND. I got all results with speed or test.

[Keven Fox]

You shouldn't even need the + in my opinion.

Anyway NO RESULTS were even close to either word. It's like searching is actually something else.

Rely on Google for searching within the forum itself? Shouldn't have to.

[bfarber]

Searching for speed test will perform a search to find posts with either "speed" or "test" in it. I just did the search and all entries seemed to have one of the two words (at least) in them.

A search for "speed test" (with the quotes) will find posts with those two words together. This didn't seem quite as reliable as it should be, but then again we are limited by MySQL as well.

+speed +test should find posts that have both words, but not necessarily consecutively as in the last example.


Admittedly #2 and #3 did not work as they should have. I'll have to talk with the other developers about that tomorrow, as I know some special character stripping occurs that might have affected this.

We would love to install Sphinx (it's much more reliable, much more efficient, and allows for 2-3 letter searches) however we try to keep our installation as close to a base installation as possible so that we can easily catch major issues that will impact the majority of our customers, i.e. issues with the search system.

[Sport Twin]

I agree that the search function on IPB is severely lacking. As I was a Dragonfly CMS user for years, which used a version of phpBB, I thought that phpBB's search function was lacking too but I think it was still a bit better than IPB's. I too will use Google to search the forums here and on my own site before I'll use the built in search function here as the results are at times, worthless.

I love the rest of the software and functionality, it's been a very pleasant experience, search just needs some serious help.

Just my 2 cents...

[Matt]

We are very much tied to MySQL's fulltext search. We have no control over that. However, boolean searching *is* broken in 3.0.2 (by boolean, I mean when you search for "hello +there"). This is fixed in 3.0.3.

[AtariAge]

[quote name='bfarber' date='30 August 2009 - 07:10 PM' timestamp='1251677457' post='1850692']
Admittedly #2 and #3 did not work as they should have. I'll have to talk with the other developers about that tomorrow, as I know some special character stripping occurs that might have affected this.
Fixing these two issues would be a big improvement.


Can you at least change the minimum search term to three characters? I know I was able to do this with MySQL before I switched to Sphinx. Time and time again I need to search for a three character keyword on your forum and it's aggravating that it cannot be done. This applies to the Tracker as well, since I'm often searching in there. Using Google as a crutch only goes so far when many of the forums/features are hidden if you aren't logged in.

..Al

We would love to install Sphinx (it's much more reliable, much more efficient, and allows for 2-3 letter searches) however we try to keep our installation as close to a base installation as possible so that we can easily catch major issues that will impact the majority of our customers, i.e. issues with the search system.

[bfarber]

We use fulltext search and would need to set custom parameters in the my.cnf to do this. Further, you lose a lot of resource improvements in fulltext searching over the manual method when you lower the minimum char limit. I'm afraid this is not likely something to be changed.

[AtariAge]

[quote name='bfarber' date='01 September 2009 - 10:25 PM' timestamp='1251861943' post='1851606']
We use fulltext search and would need to set custom parameters in the my.cnf to do this. Further, you lose a lot of resource improvements in fulltext searching over the manual method when you lower the minimum char limit. I'm afraid this is not likely something to be changed.

The change required to my.cnf is only a single line. You then need to rebuild the FULLTEXT index, which may take a while but it only has to be done once. I don't recall how long it took on my site (this was years ago) but I know I did it late at night. :)

I ran this setup on my server for some time. I never did any performance evaluations when I made the switch, but at the time I didn't notice any changes in terms of server resources consumed or the length of time it took to do searches. I don't have as many people using my forum simultaneously as compared to your forum (daily max active users is between 300 and 400 on my forum), but the posts table is significantly larger.

A search on performance penalties regarding lowering the ft_min_word_len didn't turn up anything substantial either way. I saw people state that selects would be about the same speed but inserts may be slower. How much slower, I don't know, as I didn't see anything definitive in terms of benchmarks. It would be interesting to investigate since the benefits of allowing three character searches would be nice. Trying to get meaningful search results here is often a lesson in frustration.

..Al

[bfarber]

I can't find it now. The original place I saw mention of it was on mysql.com directly, but it could be in an older manual (i.e. 4.0) and no longer relevant.