search results always the same

[Puzbie]

every time I search I get the same results regardless of topic

[Brock Samson]

every time I search I get the same results regardless of topic

[Troy]

Try it now.

Troy

[Puzbie]

still an issue...sorry

[Troy]

I can't duplicate what you're seeing.

I just did 2 searches. The first is "yearone" and the second is "challenger".

Troy

[Troy]

How are you searching? Are you typing into the search box in the top right or are you clicking the search menu item and going through the search page?

Troy

[LaOtto70Charger]

I was trying to search for fuel tank and the first time fuel came up highlighted was 3/4 of the way down on the page.  The search results looked very similar to the snapshot you posted except it started with unsilenced air cleaner.  Which clicking on the link I did not see the words fuel or tank anywhere in the post.  I got the same results whether just typing "fuel tank" in the box next to the word search or going to the search page.  On the search page I typed "fuel tank" in the first box.  Than I unchecked the feature to select every section and selected only the engine section.  I got what appeared to be the exact same results with unsilenced air cleaner as the first one.  I originally searched for "fuel tank removal" and got the same results.  I also noted that the word "by" was bold in all search results in the post by portion.  Which just looked interesting.  Not highlighted yellow just bold.

[Troy]

Well, our search has never been very good but I was hoping it was better than that. Here's my results for "fuel" (which looks ok) then "fuel tank". Only the 1st entry for the tank even has anything to do with what I searched for AND it only returned results for the for sale board. So, I may just kill it and use Google. There's another option for full text search but it requires the index to be rebuilt on a regular basis. Doing lots of maintenance is not appealing to me.

Troy

[Troy]

Bleh. Even using the advanced search page to limit the boards and it still returns incorrect results. I'll do some research to see if there's a simple fix.

Troy

[LaOtto70Charger]

This is interesting.  I just did a search for "vans fuel tank" by using the search command when in the engine section.  I actually got good search results.  The top one being a thread about that.  I had done this search in the past before the upgrade and it came up in the search bar as I was typing.  I than noted part way down a thread about getting the wrong fuel sending unit with fuel highlighted many times.  So I searched "fuel sending units".  First item was about the unsilenced air cleaner with no searches having anything highlighted.  This was something I had not searched for in the past. 

Could it pulling searches from cookies stored on my computer or something explain why one worked and one didn't?

[Troy]

It isn't anything you have stored on your computer. It's most likely a corrupted index and/or a misconfiguration on the site. I can't look at either until I get home.

Troy

[Dino]

I tried to find my old thread titled "New wheels are on!" and I cannot find it. Not even when I look by user.

[Troy]

It seems like none of the settings on advanced search have any effect.

Here's your thread though:
http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php?topic=101768.0

Troy

[Puzbie]

Hi Troy...sorry I haven't been on for a while, but I just did a search for "wiring harness" and got poor results again, but I did a little more sleuthing...

It returned 193 pages so i went to page 193 and guess what???  All the links on page 193 have wiring harness in them!!!  The relevance was 2.9%

Could the search just be returning the results in reverse? maybe it is actually 97.1%?

Just a thought...

[Dino]

It does the same here; I need to go to the last page of the search results to find the most relevant results. There's still a lot I can't find though. Not even when looking for the exact title by a certain user.   

Thanks for finding my post though!   

[grdprx]

I'm used to going to a particular section of the site, like "Engine", and then searching for specific info using the search box at the top right of the page.  Now when you do that, is still searches the whole site and brings up a lot of 'for sale' stuff.  Anyone else having trouble with that?

[HeavyFuel]

Notice the word 'by' is bolded....like that word is somehow connected to any search you try to make.

I love this site, but man, if the search function goes DOA....that's huge.   The vast knowledge within has to be locatable.

[Brass]

There is no doubt - the search feature took a sudden and mystifying nose dive.

[rebby]

Troy, what is the FTS option that you spoke of? Is it just MySQL that needs an index maintained? Sounds like a good job for cron.

I rely on searches here quite a bit (which is obvious by my post count, no need to post if I can find what I need). I'm willing to help improve that feature any way that I can.

Thanks for all you do!

[Troy]

There are several search options built in - but all impact performance and may or may not actually work all that well. One of them is to use the MySQL FTS capability. I never tried it before because our server was already taking a beating. This new server can handle about anything we can throw at it so I need to revisit prior decisions. The other option is to use an external search like Sphinx. There's a mod to enable it in the forum software. That's the one that needs some way to keep it up to date (MySQL stays current because it writes the search entries as the posts are recorded). Another option is to go completely external and hook in Google search (plus I can tie it to ads and get paid).

Troy

[rebby]

IMHO...

MySQL FTS - It's alright and does the job, for the most part. It's not perfect, not particularly fast, and does put a bit of load on ALL DB activity not just searches. This is likely the easiest option to implement.
Sphinx - Obviously a tool such as this is going to perform better than using an internal FTS option. This option scales a lot better and doesn't hit the DB itself as hard. There is some manual and/or scheduled tasks that you need to do to keep things updated and results have a delay (how often do you update the shards?). Most likely, this is the most difficult option to implement.
Google - Personally, I'm not crazy about external indexing. It has all the pitfalls of the Sphinx option and isn't nearly as configurable (but does remove the infrastructure requirement that Sphinx entails). That said... this is the only option with an revenue stream. Due to that fact alone, I would lean in this direction from the start. Keeping a site like this running isn't free and anything that you can do (within reason) to help keep the lights on, is certainly justifiable.

Those are my $.02 on the issue, however, I admit that my thoughts may not be worth the full $.02.

[funknut]

I played with search a bit today and no matter what search terms I put in, it always seems to try and match on the word 'by' for me.

I may get 1 good match and then a bunch of others with the word 'by' in bold, which of course matches on every post.

If it will help I can grab some screenshots, but something seems a bit wonky.

[Troy]

No screenshots necessary. It's broken! Solving it isn't super easy.

rebby: the built in search word index took nearly 2 days to complete and it's giving us what we have now. I'm unsure as to how long it will take the MySQL tables to fill. I can't regulate it or run it on the side so if it bogs the server for a week it will be a problem! All the other options can be installed without affecting the site (at least not too much).

Troy

[rebby]

No screenshots necessary. It's broken! Solving it isn't super easy.

rebby: the built in search word index took nearly 2 days to complete and it's giving us what we have now. I'm unsure as to how long it will take the MySQL tables to fill. I can't regulate it or run it on the side so if it bogs the server for a week it will be a problem! All the other options can be installed without affecting the site (at least not too much).

Troy

Ah, that's a good point. I hadn't considered the volume of data that you need to crunch here. What I've always done in the past is setup DB replication to a slave then taken the replicated DB "down" (usually just ifdown the replication interface), build the FTS, bring the the replicated DB "up" (ifup). Once the DB is caught up w/replication. I'll kill off the old master and put the slave in it's place and carry on.

In my case though, I usually have an entire virtualization environment (VMware) and a SAN at my disposal. In this case, that my not be an option.

Either way... I like the Google option since it will help bring you some revenue which is never a bad a thing. Best of luck w/whatever path you take and let me know if I can help out in anyway.

[Brock Samson]

still don't work.