Shoutbox

Bandwidth?

Server load maybe.

The load would heavily be increased, however i'm inclided to agree; it'd be useful.

The issue is server load... if people could search for certain small strings, they'd get half the posts on the board as results... The search is one of the most server-intensive features of the board, so I want it to be limited.

The keyword length limit is an idea stolen from other forum search scripts.

Perhaps we should have a big list of useful/popular threads, all organized into categories, all on one page. The user could scroll through, or do a Ctrl+F, to find what they want. Anything they can't find on the list could be searched for. It would be "cleaner" than having tons of sticky threads. 4 stickies per forum is like the maximum, IMO.

Then simply look for "msn ". Done!

Hope this "bug" is not taken in consideration...

Whatever.

quote:

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Originally posted by WDZ
The issue is server load... if people could search for certain small strings, they'd get half the posts on the board as results... The search is one of the most server-intensive features of the board, so I want it to be limited.

The keyword length limit is an idea stolen from other forum search scripts.

Perhaps we should have a big list of useful/popular threads, all organized into categories, all on one page. The user could scroll through, or do a Ctrl+F, to find what they want. Anything they can't find on the list could be searched for. It would be "cleaner" than having tons of sticky threads. 4 stickies per forum is like the maximum, IMO.

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Erm well perhaps some sort of FAQ question page ?  Some Kind of seperate Forum with a modified page view.  Or perhaps something where you can do a slowly refined search from a database . i.e.  Is your query to do with the Sponsor, A Msgplus Feature, or Other Messenger related Query. 

Well that proberly makes no sense to anyone but me  but if ya get what I mean it'll proberly work quite well

I'll think the best way to improve searches is to search threads and sort the by relevance (ammount of matching posts in a thread / total posts in the thread). And, if it's a recursive query (like in the example) show announcements and sticky threads at the top of the results list. The secondary sort method would be relevance (as said before) and the tertiary (or w/e) the date/time.

Searching "sponsor" would return:

1.
http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=17940
2. [any sticky about sponsor program]
3. Descending importance,

I'd suggest to add this support-search by default and make it possible to switch back to default DESC-Date search.

Just an idea... again

quote:

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Originally posted by WDZ
4 stickies per forum is like the maximum, IMO.

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2 Is messy, 4 is ridiculous.

quote:

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Originally posted by Wabz
Erm well perhaps some sort of FAQ question page ?

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Wouldnt Patchous FAQ's be the solution to this, so that we can just post that link. And it adds to the already answered questions.

quote:

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Originally posted by KeyStorm
I'll think the best way to improve searches is to search threads and sort the by relevance (ammount of matching posts in a thread / total posts in the thread).

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Just from seeing this mybboard forums tuff develop I kinda have the impression the search feature has been a grey area. The devbb was way to buggy even to use. WDZ's search is good however it seems whichones is used it uses a lot of bandwidth. I don't think its as simple as re-coding the search feature itself. Maybe a solution the cause is a better form of attack?

It shouldn't be easy to attack if programmed safely and paying attention to all user-inputs (like any responsible programmer should do ).
Accepting only alphanumerical chars and readig them directly from the POST_VARS header, should be enough to prevent any attack, afaik.
As for support searches I would suggest for instance not to search in T&T (it's not much data, but it is a slightly bigger haystack to search indeed) And only show the 20 most relevant threads. I think this would lower b/w along with with the fact not showing posts, but whole threads. This would dramatically decrease b/w usage (although increasing server load a bit) and would be more useful for support.
Tbh, if you look for uninstalling sponsor and the first thing you find is this post... It's not very useful. So better search by threads so we can make sure the first result will be enough.

The search function is good enough as it is.

The 3-character limit isn't that big of a problem at all. It only is for some special/rare cases. But then again you can use some tricks: for example instead of ink -> "ink "

Search results highly depends on what you search for. In my experience, many people search for the wrong thing, either too specific, or too non-specific.

Limiting search result to latest x threads is very bad. Many topics are old and in old threads.

Sorting on relevance/importance isn't possible without a quoting system for each post. Even then, this kind of system isn't fail-proof.

Using the Patchou's FAQ is good if it was constantly updated. Even so, it doesn't contain many plus! related problems, or isn't detailed enough for the complete n00b. Also, this messageboard contains more then just the specific plus! stuff...

Even in T&T there are (sometimes) things that you want to search for.

Creating a big FAQ is very very intensive work. Although it will be a solution for many people. But it needs to be maintained constantly by very responsible and organised people (and not too many people) who also know a lot about all the problems given and have the time to test/verify/comment/etc... Creating/maintaining such a faq is a full-time job. Don't underestimate it...


EDIT: also see http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=24...d=240412#pid240412

Hmm...

Maybe have a "show results as" option? If set to "posts," behave exactly as it does now. If set to "threads," only show one result per thread and sort the results by how many posts within the thread match the search criteria?

I could probably* make that... sound good?

* Haven't fully planned it in my head yet, so dunno if there will be problems...