Forum "search" broken again?

[Krusty]

Seems the forum search is not working. I thought this was fixed? For a while we enjoyed a functional search option!

It's not returning things I know are somewhat recent topics and only shows posts from 2000 or 2001 for most keywords I try.

[Badboy]

Hi Krusty

I think it works if you limit the search period to last (insert a number) of days and keep the value to something you know will cover it.

Hope that helps.

Badboy

[Krusty]

I tried that as well and it hangs, never returning results (for example, trying 100 days, trying 50 days, trying 30 days, it won't ever return a result)

[ROC]

Hey Krusty,

What are you searching for exactly? I'll try the same search and see if I get any results.  I just used the search feature and it came back with 4 pages of results going back to 2005, and it returned the search results nearly instantly.

EDIT. just looked at those results again, they returned 4 pages between 2000 and 2006, nothing current.  Now I see what you saw, hmm.

[Badboy]

I tried that as well and it hangs, never returning results (for example, trying 100 days, trying 50 days, trying 30 days, it won't ever return a result)

It doesn't hang for me, I just tried it.

I limited the search to three boards, Help and Training, General Discussion and Aircraft and Vehicles, for the last 90 days and searched for the words "turn fight" by any user and asked it to present the most recent topics first.

It found three pages of topics within two minutes and the most recent thread was yesterday.

Could it be that if you don't limit the search, it just takes so long it only seems to hang?

Anyway it seems to work for me.

Badboy

[Jayhawk]

Though not always the best option, you can also use google by following your search term with:

site:bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf

You can also use the date range on the left side to narrow results.

Again, not always perfect but sometimes can get you a result much quicker than the forum search.

[Krusty]

interesting suggestion, jayhawk.


ROC: Was trying a number of things. One example was "me410" to try and remind myself which thread I think I read something in. It turns up tons of wishlist info from turn of the century back when AH was released, but nothing new. Specifying a limited number of days hangs the search and eventually I get a "server has timed out" problem no matter how short I set it.

[ROC]

Hmm.

Just searched me410 and got instant results from 2000 to 2005 time period.

Used the advanced search, selecting all forums, and it froze.

Used the advanced search, general forum only, most current results, and got 4 pages from 2000 and 2001.

[Krusty]

That's what I've been doing "all forums"

Although I noticed this time the me410 did actually work. How long it took, I don't know. I gave up waiting and went to another window, came back many minutes later and found it actually turned up some results. Clicking on "Page 2" made it freeze up just as bad again.

[Skuzzy]

When searching, if you use the "all" forums option there is a good chance it will not return all the posts found.  Has to do with our message base being so large.  MySQL will timeout on the query and you will only get partial results.

[Krusty]

Is there an upper limit you suggest? I.e. only choose 3 forums at a time?

[Skuzzy]

It just depends on the search.  Use as many words as possible.  It actually helps speed up the query.

The only way we could make it work better is to archive off a large portion of the forums.

[Jayhawk]

It just depends on the search.  Use as many words as possible.  It actually helps speed up the query.

The only way we could make it work better is to archive off a large portion of the forums.

Archive off in the sense we wouldn't be able to access it or could choose to search archived data?

[Skuzzy]

It would have to be physically separated, which would make searching it difficult.

[Krusty]

I'm not a fan of that. It's sometimes nice to go back and read stuff from 1999/2000.