Search Improvements

[EarthDog]

Hi All!

During all these years of me using IPB , search functionality seemed always a little off.

Its no good having the best content in the world if you can access it fast and reliable.

The case is that i want my users to be able to search in the database of articles to find what they need.

We are very strict in using the correct tags and naming the topics accordingly.

What i simply wanted to do is to be able to search for ALL the tags i put and also with the search term if i include it.

So you need to clarify in the search screen:

1. If you need both tags and term functionality
2. If you need AND or OR in the tags
3. If you need AND or OR in the terms
4. And also you can define the default behavior in ACP based on databases/forums) e.t.c

Right now the advanced search has only 2 options:

Which are a little misleading.

The current logic is:

• Match term OR tags leads to : term OR (tag1 OR tag2 OR tag3 ...)
• Match term AND tags leads to: term AND (tag1 OR tag2 OR tag3)

So it kind of negates the use of multiple tags in our database. '

The answer to my support ticket is that this is not currently supported.

So what i ask is how you guys deal with it and if there are ideas on what to do to make search better (seriously search needs attention).

Thanks.

[christopher-w]

I am working with another client to develop this:

On 1/6/2020 at 1:16 PM, christopher-w said:

1/ An interface to the Algolia search engine (similar to Elastic). This would involve background pushing into the Algolia cloud service all records from an Invision installation: Posts, Comments, Reviews, Articles, Gallery, Members, Clubs and Clubs contents etc, + some third party plugins - Links, VideoBox, Classifieds etc. on create, edit, update and delete. Algolia is a cloud based service.  WRT to permissions, ideally I'd like to see read permissions honoured but this may be phase 2 requirement.

This is a backend, PHP only requirement. I will provide the JS client which will pull down results from Algolia.

The Algolia developed plugin for WP is both simple and brilliant, and I am hoping that the implementation for IPS would be same. I am advised that the IPS Elastic integration would be a good starting point - although need to check if we can use that and whether I need to purchase it. At this stage I wouldn't like to see this made available in the marketplace, but am open to persuasion.

 

... which is a search engine driven presentation interface, which uses data stored in Algolia (or possibly Elastic) to drive the UI. It could  be used to deliver the boolean aggregation you require, either ad-hoc on demand for power users, or as stored procedures sitting on the client behind a button.

We are still at the early stage of tool and developer selection, but in our minds the need is clear given the above could be used to drive much of the Invision user experience.

Happy to discuss further with you.