Search update:
- Searching should be much faster than it was (searching against a pre-generated index - updated hourly)
- More secure (should be safe from cross-site scripting and SQL injection)
- Messed around a little with the look - nothing major yet

PLEASE
- Check it out, let me know what you think...
- Let me know ASAP what changes you'd like to have made with the site search... soon I'll be moving onto another portion of the site.

Any chance of a download search being implemented soon? Trying to find the mod(s) I'm looking for out of eighteen or twenty pages of downloads is becoming rather frustrating. Thanks!

...pagination.

Doing a search for "mods" on the main site just keeps going... and going... and going... and going

There are other searches that do similiar as well.

The problem is that it searches both the news and downloads at the same time. Furthermore, it pulls ALL the results out into one HUGE page (i stopped it at around 700kb of page i think Opera said it was).

It could do with an option to search news or downloads for starters - especially since for say, searching for mods, it'll pull up both the news items and and downloads as well...

It would also be helpful to paginate the results... so that it (by default) pulls back limit 0, 20 (so twenty results). Of course you can calculate the num of pages required by doing num of rows in the query's result, divided by the number of results per page, and generating a load of links at the bottom of the page for "page numbers".
The links can have start=60 in them, to give the limit it's new value (limit 60, 20) if clicked upon, and showing only twenty results once more - but from rows 60-80 etc. Sure you get my train of thought, just wanted to ensure i give as much info as possible

@J Dawg: you should be able to search downloads on the main page via the search box in the top right (it also searches news and the FAQ). I will create a search form that can just search downloads (using and/or/near etc)

@Chips: Great ideas, and items I will work on in the next day or two.

A single search form that allows users to choose what to search (news, downloads, forum, etc) and provides more search options is in the works.

Thanks!

OK, I have a pre-release version available for testing here:
Beta Search .

Next steps are to migrate to ASP.NET and improve performance (which may mean not allowing unlimited date range searches - sorry hits server kinda hard)

Take a look and let me know if you lke it, if it is broken, or what additional features are still required.

Thanks

Why not put an option in to search all forums instead of a selected one.

Now that I've tried to keep people from running searches back-to-back (should be a 30 second delay between searches), I'll give it a try.

The reason why it wasn't enabled before as it was a bit of a hit on the server.

It is enabled now (but not the default): _All Forums_

Give it a try!

I have given it a try, seems very good!

Glad to hear you like it. It is the default search page now - for a day or two - until I can see what kind of effect it has on the server (and how people like it).

Please everyone try it out and post your feedback here.

Thanks

@akataka-

This new search page is awesome! Concise, well designed, and able to search every piece of the site based on specific criteria... what more could I ask for? Well done!

Is it the processing of the results that is intensive on the server, rather than the actual search itself? it still goes through the rows looking for things matching the criteria given doesn't it, regardless of whether you search for 1 day, or 1000 days - it's still checking every record for it...

If its the processing, that's where pagination could really help out with the results... although it would be repeated query running of course (maybe a bad thing if the actual query and not processing the results is the issue on server load).

However, the current system looks great, and works well enough. I say enough, simply because I have another suggestion. The problem is this:

You can only search 120 days, some may wish to search back further. However, it doesn't matter too much - because to be honest, it pulls results from whatever time period to the front, ordered by the date. So, if you are searching back 120 days, limit the search to 100 rows - and then search for freelancer - you'll barely get past the first few weeks... let alone 120 days.

So the first thing i'd suggest is putting a reversal of the order by date as an option. So you can effectively search backwards as well as forwards (ie, you get the oldest first). People can repeat the search with the limited date function to try and get every date.

The second thing i'd suggest is putting some more time options in there. Obviously it'll work harder if it has to search the main text of every single record in history, so how about some "from - to" date options? In other words, it goes back 120 days - how about 120-180 days previously, 180-360, 1 year - 2 years.

Yeah, that'd be almost exponential on the load, but if that's not going to happen - we can actually do a blanket delete of older topics (which haven't been had a post in within the last 2 years). After all, if you cannot see the post in the forums by selecting posts from the last year (limited, for good reason - but the forums don't paginate, otherwise it would be not as bad) and you cannot search for results over 120 days (again, ensuring that older stuff can never be read) - then it can't ever be read by anyone... at which point, it's surplus to requirements. That'd help cut down on the database size somewhat imo (something i mentioned years ago was removing all old threads that no-one can find or read as they are just too old. Now it's only 1 year you can look back, may as well get rid of anything that hasn't been posted in within the last year! imagine the amount of free'd up space they'd be ).

The processing is not really that bad now that I'm using a better search engine, but the hit, when there is one is is on the server while it searches (I'm not as worried as I was after leaving up the search page overnight).

Regarding the search date range: you can right now search everything regardless of dates (Search By Date: Any Date). The only downside to this is the search takes a bit longer as we do have lots of data to search through.

I am planning on using a date range option rather than just "back x days" which should help everyone.

Regarding searching for 'freelancer' - I'm not sure what someone would be trying to get by searching for this term, but I would hope he/she would improve the query to improve the accuracy of the results. (also the date range selection option will help)

Pagination would have to be done on the client - I wouldn't want to rerun the query for every x number of results (not efficient).

Archiving some of the old posts may be a good idea, but I do know some folks still like to go back to them time to time - something to look into.

Thanks again for the feedback. I'll see what else I can get in place (pagination, date range selection to start with) soon.

drop the time frame between searched from 30 to 10. When your searching for a mod and cant find it using the keywords its annoying to have to wait so long to search again.

Ok, delay is now set to 10 seconds...

How is the new search working for everyone? I've seen over since 5205 searches since 9/9 6:15 PM...


Top Searches:
star wars: 88
crossfire: 79
mod manager: 79
freelancer mod manager: 76
ioncross: 73
flmm: 71
tng: 56
Freeworlds: 54
WTS: 47
Mod: 43


Oh, and one other thought: would there be any value in searching news comments?

Another thing that will help improve the search is to post a search you've performed (use the "link to this search" link at the top of the results) , and the expected page/link you'd expect to find. Don't spam me with too many, but if you want to see improvements, post a few



Keep the feedback coming!


Edited by - akataka on 9/13/2006 10:51:29 AM